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 Also available from Continuum
Gilles De leuze, Foucault
Timothy O'Leary, Foucault and the Art ofEthics
 Death and
the Labyrinth
THE WORLD OF
RAYMOND ROUSSEL

MICHEL FOUCAULT
Translated from the French by
CHARLES RUAS
With an Introduction by
JAMES FAUBION
and a Postscript by
JOHN ASHBERY
 Continuum
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© Editions Gallimard 1963

Introduction©James D. Faubion 2004
Postscript©John Ashbery 1986
English translation© Doubleday and Co. Inc. 1986

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 0-8264-6435-1

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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 Contents

General Introduction byJames Faubion VII

Chronology ofFoucault 's Life and Work xxm
Translator's Acknowledgements XXVII

1. The Threshold and the Key 3

2. The Cushions of the Billiard Table 15
3. Rhyme and Reason 31
4. Dawns, Mine, Crystal 51
5. The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth 77
6. The Surface of Things 99
7. The Empty Lens 1 25
8. The Enclosed Sun 1 57
9. An Interview with Michel Foucault by Charles Ruas 171
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel by john Ashbery 1 89
Bibliography ofPrimary and Secondary Works 205
Selected Bibliography 209
Index 213
 General Introduction
BY JAMES FAUBION

Michel Foucault finds in Raymond Roussel's works and

days an entire cosmos, whose principle of unity is the
principle of the threshold, which is also the principle of
the parenthesis. The Rousselian cosmos is replete with
thresholds, microscopic and galactic. It is itself the vastest
threshold of all, the vastest parenthesis, forever posed
between the radical originality of a birth to which it owes
its existence but can never authentically reproduce and
the silent infinitude of a death that it ubiquitously fore­
shadows but can never encompass. Its cosmogony must
remain something of a mystery as a consequence. So, too,
its teleology. It is nevertheless clearly divisible into two
parts, two phases. In its youthful phase, it glows with the
light of a radiant and sovereign sun. It is a place of relent­
less spectacle, of sheer visibility, but of a luminosity so
intense that it can be disorienting, even blinding. It is thus
a place in which what is most fully exposed has perhaps
the best chance of remaining secret. Then suddenly, a
Vlll D EATH A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H

crisis: the sun implodes and in the melancholy half-light of

its void, a second phase begins, more troubled but also
more expansive, more far reaching.
Yet, Foucault warns us against making too much of such
a division. Beneath it, the Rousselian cosmos preserves a
constant substrate. It is composed of two fundamental
elements: words and things. Its dynamics of fusion and
fission, of creation and destruction, are various, but its
ecology is pervasively an ecology of metamorphosis, of the
tragic and fateful metamorphosis of the living into the
dead. Its creatures-organic, machinic, or some combin­
ation of the two-are themselves metamorphic. They are
threshold-creatures, populating the parenthesis posed
between birth and death and destined to meander within
its labyrinthine confines without ever finding their way
out. The labors of these living dead are also various, but
they all belong to an economy of unremitting scarcity and
need. The Rousselian cosmos allows no surplus. It does
not even allow simple subsistence. The depths of its pov­
erty stem from the essential poverty of its sole means and
mode of production-from the poverty of language itself.
In the Rousselian cosmos, being is the mother lode, the
source of all value. Each thing is a jewel of exquisite and
radical rarity, and each requires a tool of equal exquisite­
ness and singularity for its extraction and refinement.
Words might avail-if only there were enough of them to
go around. The trouble is that language is an industry far
too crude to be able to fit out each thing with its tailor­
made signifier. Such words as there are must thus do yeo­
man's service. In so serving-in their abstraction and
polysemy and play-they are the instruments of all that is
distinctly poetic, of all tropes and figures. But these yeo­
men are also false. Or to be less extreme, their loyalty is
imperfect. They should represent the things that are their
proper masters but instead they distort and degrade them.
General Introduction lX

Words are bad actors who botch their roles. They are cop­
ies made of used, leftover, prefabricated and reprocessed
materials. They are lacking. They are the cleft in the
threshold, the hollow between two parentheses, the decay
in every tragic metamorphosis, the countless dead ends of
a labyrinth within which every quest and from which every
attempted escape is futile.

Is the Rousselian cosmos Roussel's own? Opinions vary.

Foucault published his essay-the French title of which is
simply Raymond Roussel-in 1 963. A considerable corpus
of Roussel's previously inaccessible manuscripts, letters
and journals came to public light in 1989 and generated a
new wave of scholarly engagement that continues to this
day.* Its leading scholars largely agree that Foucault's
analysis of Roussel's methods of composition and of the
design and structure of his poetry and prose remains an
essential precedent to which every subsequent "formalist"
critic must acknowledge a debt. :<Many of the same scholars
object to what they regard as an excessively "metaphysical"
interpretation of the relation between Roussel's biog­
raphy and his oeuvre that ends up distorting the biog­
raphy and the oeuvre alike. Anne-Marie Amiot, for
example, reminds us of ample evidence of a Roussel who
* Since 1989, Roussel has been the subject of a special issue of the French journal
Digraphe (Kerbellec 1994) and of the first volume of a projected critical series spon­
sored by La Revue des lettres modernes (ed. Amiot and Reggiani 200 1 ) . He has also
been the subject of full-length studies, the most extensive one undertaken by the
eminent French literary scholar Annie Le Brun ( 1994; see also Busine 1995). None
of these texts are as yet available in English. The discovery and making public of the
contents of Roussel's famous "trunks" of papers also inspired his leading biog­
rapher, Fran<;ois Caradec, to issue a revised version of his seminal study, which has
recently been translated into English by Ian Monk (Caradec 2001). Mark Ford's
is the first full-length study origin­
Raymond Roussel and the Republic ofDreams (2000)
ally written in English to appear in more than three decades; it includes among
other things a fine bibliography of Roussel scholarship, past and present.
t In a recent overview of Roussel scholarship, Anne-Marie Amiot characterizes
Foucault's study as an "essential piece of work to which almost the totality of formal­
ist critiques refer and from which they draw" (Amiot 2001 : 5 1 , n. 50).
X D E ATH A N D T H E L A B Y RI N T H

is less Foucault's Harbinger of Death Foretold than an

inveterate dandy who increasingly cultivates the Romantic
pallor of the Tragic Genius and increasingly proj ects him­
self into the fantastic landscapes of his novels the older he
grows (Amiot 2001: 25-7). Annie Le Brun's Roussel is not
a disappointed Gnostic in perpetual mourning over the
inadequacy of language and the inaccessibility of being
but instead a bitter visceralist in sempiternal protest
against the weight of the very real "fluids, secretions,
vomit, sweat, spit, snot, and excrement" in which he and
every other human being are inextricably mired, and his
language only the more or less expressive, the more or less
poignant means of testifying to such ignominy ( 1994:
3 14). As early as 1984, at least one scholar expressed frus­
tration over Foucault's imitation in his essay of the circu­
larities, convolutions and flourishes of paradox typical of
Roussel's own literary style (Adamson 1984: 90). Perhaps
more forthrightly, and in any event more recently, Mark
Ford points to the same convolutions and flourishes in
reiterating what Foucault himself admits in the interview
with Charles Ruas that is included as an appendix in this
volume: his essay is difficult; it is hard to follow. In Ford's
judgment, it is altogether too like Roussel, its mimicry a
symptom of a somewhat too ardent "love" (as Foucault
puts it in the same interview) , and its difficulty self­
defeating (2000: 228-9). Ford credits Foucault with doing
more to garner for Roussel that "bit of posthumous fame"
he so desired (227), but chides him for rendering both
Roussel and his own essay "marginal" in the process (229).
For all this, most contemporary scholars could still agree
with the assessment that John Ashbery offered in his
introduction to the first edition of Death and the Labyrinth
(included here as another appendix) . Foucault's essay is
indeed "groundbreaking." It is an often dazzling, always
intellectually acrobatic tour de force.
General Introduction Xl

But is the Rousselian cosmos then actually Foucault's?

Some of the new Rousselian wave implies as much.
Reflecting recently on his own enduring interest in Rous­
sel, Ashbery dispenses with all subtlety: "From Jean Coc­
teau to Foucault and beyond, critics who discuss Roussel
tend almost unconsciously to write about themselves"
(2000: 49). The pronouncement is a bit harsh, but it is
also compelling-not least because of the very tone of the
writing to which Ashbery alludes. Through long stretches
of Death and the Labyrinth, Foucault seems to dissolve into
Roussel, to speak in Rousselian tongues. At the very least,
he seems surprisingly ready and willing to adopt the role
of the acolyte of the Master and of the brilliantly humble
exegete of the master's Wisdom. The essay is often
unabashedly metaphysical. It puts forward what
approaches the status of a full-fledged philosophy of lan­
guage (cf. Amiot 2001: 38) . It is remarkable for the time­
less generality of so many of its claims. Nothing in
Foucault's entire oeuvre sounds quite so axiomatic. Noth­
ing else sounds quite so much like an articulation of
the invariant first principles upon which and from which
historical inquiry might proceed.
But Foucault, whose loyalties (and disloyalties) are
more often than not textually veiled, isn ' t about to let us
resolve the issue so easily. In the interview with Ruas, he
confides that Roussel's prosody seduced his "obsessional
side." He teasingly suggests that the very reasons which, in
his "perverseness" and in his "psychopathological
makeup," led him to pursue his interest in the history of
madness also led him to pursue his interest in Roussel. He
confesses to a "secret affair" with Roussel that unfolded
over the course of "several summers." These are charming
intimacies (or apparent intimacies, as the case may be) ,
but they hardly lay bare the scope or substance of a
relationship that he "doesn' t feel any inclination" to
Xll D EAT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

scrutinize. Nor do they even remotely add up to the reve­

lation of a thoroughgoing meeting of minds. Foucault
presses the point with Ruas; he would "go so far as to say"
to him that his essay on Roussel "doesn't have a place in
the sequence of [his] books." If through an argument
from silence, he makes the same point in the intellectual
self-portrait that he submitted pseudonymously to an
encyclopedia of French philosophers only a couple of
years at most before he spoke with Ruas. In inaugurating
that portrait, a certain "Maurice Florence" observes that
Foucault has as his proj ect a "critical history of thought"
that would amount "neither to a history of acquisitions or
a history of concealments" of the truth but instead to a
"history of 'veridictions,' understood as the forms accord­
ing to which discourses capable of being declared true or
false are articulated concerning a domain of things"
( 1998d: 460) . He observes further that the project is
restricted by design just to those veridictions or "games of
truth" in which "the subject himself is posited as an object
of possible knowledge" ( 1 998d: 460 ) . Under the banner
of that project Monsieur Florence proceeds to place all of
Foucault's books from Madness and Civilization forward to
the first volume of The History of Sexuality.* Or rather, he
does so with only one exception. He neither mentions nor
alludes to the book on Roussel.
None of which, of course, quite entails that the book on
Roussel is anything other than a declaration of first prin­
ciples . . . . In the end, however, it is futile to play a second­
guessing game with Foucault, to try to read between lines
that are already between the lines in order to discern and
expose his real commitments when he does not care to

* The book we have in English as Madness and Civilization: A History ofMadness in the
Age of Reason ( 1 965) is an abridged version of Foucault's doctoral thesis, Folie et
Deraison: Histoire de la folie a l'age classique, published in French in 1 96 1 . The first
volume of The History of Sexuality ( 1 978) was published in French in 1 976.
General Introduction Xlll

expose them himself. His ironies and his silences will

always have the upper hand, all the more so the farther we
are removed from getting yet another interview, playing
yet another round with him. Certain questions must be
left unanswered-including the question of whether,
beyond any intellectual attraction, Foucault might have
"identified" with Roussel the man-as dandy, aesthete,
obsessional, depressive, Romantic, experimentalist,
homosexual, enfant terrible of the French bourgeoisie, or
what have you. Be that as it may, upon the publication of
his second book, the young Foucault identified Roussel­
together with Jacques Lacan, Maurice Blanchot, and
Georges Dumezil-as someone who had influenced him.*
Speaking with Ruas, a considerably older Foucault can still
offer a specific illustration. Roussel's preoccupation with
the prefabrication of language, with the "ready-made" and
artifactual quality of words and phrases and sentences,
informs Foucault's conceptualization of discourses as scat­
terings of "enunciations," of words and phrases and sen­
tences already spoken, of the linguistic but quite material
deposits of thought itself. Foucault makes no mention of
Roussel in The Archaeology ofKnowledge, his most systematic
exposition of discourses and their constituents (Foucault
1 982) . Yet, with Ruas's prompting, even he acknowledges
that a Rousselian echo is audible in his subsequent
endeavors. Nor is it the only such echo to be heard.

U nsurprisingly, Rousselian imagery and Rousselian

themes are most palpable in the writings that Foucault
undertook shortly before and shortly after the third and,
as he suggested to Ruas, the most "personal" of his books

*That is to say, in Madness and Civilization. See Eribon 1991: 71. Foucault wrote a
short book, Maladie mentale et Personnaliti, in 1954, seven years before Madness and
Civilization. He revised the book in 1 962; we have the latter in English under its
revised title, Menta/Illness and Psychology (Foucault 1976).
XIV D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N TH

appeared, and especially in his writings on literature and

literary authority. "So Cruel a Knowledge," a commentary
on two late eighteenth-century romances that was pub­
lished in the j ournal Critique in 1962, is so saturated with
Rousselian imagery and themes alike that it must be
regarded as a companion piece to Raymond Roussel
(Foucault 1 998g) . It unleashes a cascade of mirrors, laby­
rinths, Minotaurs and other grotesques, strange (and bru­
tal) machines. It dwells on subjects and objects, on the
deceits of language, on metamorphosis, on death. If it
could be read, not merely as a companion piece but as a
sort of historical preface to Foucault's study of Roussel, its
conclusion would be all the more provocative. "So Cruel a
Knowledge" closes with the observation that the space of
the metamorphosis of the natural into the counternatural
-into the machine, the beast, the corpse-is the space in
which "the truly transgressive forms" of distinctly modern
eroticism transpire (1998g: 67) . Yet, if that space is indeed
the space of Roussel's cosmos, Foucault has nothing to say
about it in the very discreet pages of Raymond Roussel itself.
The thinker whom we now associate with a particularly
relentless unmasking of the historicity of apparently time­
less phenomena nevertheless engages in explicitly onto­
logical speculation in "Language to Infinity," published in
the autumn of 1963 in the journal Tel Quel (Foucault
1998f) . There is no mention of Roussel here, either.
Instead, Foucault opens with a meditation on the relation
between language and death whose themes would have
been very familiar to anyone who had read the second,
third and fourth chapters of that most personal of his
books during the spring or summer of the same year.
Foucault resorts not to Roussel but to Jorge Luis Borges
for an illustration of "the great, invisible labyrinth of lan­
guage, of language that divides itself and becomes its own
mirror" ( 1998f: 9 1 -2) . He seems unwilling to appeal to
General Introduction XV

the "empty lens" of Roussel's Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique,

the "black disk" that is "like a dark machine for creating
repetition and thus the hollowing out of a void where
being is swallowed up, where words hurl themselves in
pursuit of objects, and where language endlessly crashes
down" ( 1 38) in order to vivify his central philosophical
claim. Instead, he himself casts being (more lucidly?) as a
Scheherazade obscured and lost and language as the "bril­
liant, profound, and virtual dis [k] " out of which she arises
"infinitely reduced. " So, then:

A work of language is the body of language crossed by death

in order to open this infinite space where doubles reverber­
ate. And the forms of this superimposition, essential to the
construction of the work, can undoubtedly only be
deciphered in these adjacent, fragile, and slightly mon­
strous figures where a division into two signals itself; their
exact listing and classification, the establishment of the laws
that govern their functioning or transformations, could well
lead to a formal ontology of literature ( 1998f: 93) .

Should "Language to Infinity" still somehow not serve

adequately as a philosophical afterword to Death and the
Labyrinth, one might supplement it with Foucault's com­
mentaries on Gustave Flaubert's Temptation of Saint
Anthony ( 1 998a) or Jules Verne (the writer whom Roussel
most admired [see Foucault 1 998c] ) or his assessment of
Pierre Klossowski's (Foucault 1 998i) or Maurice Blan­
chot' s (Foucault 1 998j ) literary and philosophical
achievements. Every one of these latter writings further
develop and further refine the thematic of language,
repetition and doubling, and the infinite recession of
being.

A "Publisher's Note" informs the reader of the English

translation of Foucault's Les Mots et les choses that a literal
XVI D E AT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

rendering of the French title would risk the book's confu­

sion with two others already bearing the title Words and
Things and that besides, Foucault had originally preferred
the title subsequently given the work in English: The Order
of Things ( 1 973: viii) . Fine and well: the French title is still
the most voluble echo of the central motifs of Raymond
Roussel in any of Foucault's other books. Yet, if Les Mots et
les choses is very much concerned with words and things, it
is more specifically concerned with the great revision of
the presumptive relation between them at the end of the
eighteenth century that went hand in hand with the
emergence of a strange creature called "Man," a creature
somehow capable of being at once the subject and the
obj ect of knowledge, at once free and determined, and so
at once the practitioner and the laboratory rat of a new
and rapidly differentiating array of "human sciences."* No
such concern informs any of Roussel's own labors. Nor is
Les Mots et les choses a philosophical work. It is not in any
event a treatise on ontology. It is an "archaeological"
inquiry into the pasts of certain philosophical and scien­
tific discourses and its rhetorical trajectory is the trajectory
of a historico-epistemological critique-a relentless one,
too-of the false figures and errant enuciations of which
those discourses were composed. Not much Roussel in
that, either.
The French title of The Order of Things is not, however, as
misleading as it might seem at first sight. It presages an
actual visit from Roussel, who arrives in the company of
Antonin Artaud in the book's final chapter, perhaps a bit
late but at a juncture that could hardly be more pivotal.
He is among the earliest messiahs of a literature devoted
to the question, the vast puzzle, of language itself. He is

*The French rubric translated here as the "human sciences" has no precise counter­
part in English. It includes both the theoretical and the applied social sciences, but
also includes psychology and human biology.
General Introduction XVll

the threshold-creature of a literature "whose necessity has

its roots in a vast configuration in which the whole struc­
ture of our thought and knowledge is traced" ( 1973: 383).
His literature-enlarged by the surrealists, polished by
Franz Kafka and Georges Bataille and Blanchot-is the
unbounded mirror in which we who are human above all
bear witness to our limits, to our fundamental finitude, to
our being reduced.* It is the vehicle through which we
might gain an inkling of the encompassing unity of lan­
guage and so gain an inkling of at least one of our possible
destinies. If we-as Men-came into being only when lan­
guage ceased to be trusted as a picture of reality and
became instead so many fragmented parcels of our sub­
jective property, we might envisage ourselves being
absorbed and so having our end-as Men-in a language
that once again convinces us of its proper integrity and
objectivity and is finally freed of the expectation that it
ultimately refer to anything but itself. Jacques Lacan and
Claude Levi-Strauss may thus encourage him, but it is
Roussel and his literary confreres who ultimately
guide Foucault to what is still his most notorious (and
often misunderstood) "wager": that Man might someday
"be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of a
sea."t
If Foucault was betting that Man was in fact very soon to
be erased, he was surely wrong, and he seems sooner or
later to have realized that he was. He would never place
such a bet again, if he ever did at all. If his wager was

* Foucault's introduction to the collected works of Georges Bataille appears in

English as "A Preface to Transgression" (Foucault 1 998b).
t Foucault 1973: 387. In the pages before this grand remark, Foucault points to
"psychoanalysis" and "ethnology" as carrying the logic and the questions of the
human sciences to its limits and so foreshadowing the possibility of the dissolution
of Man into language. The psychoanalysis he has in mind is clearly the psycho­
analysis of jacques Lacan. The ethnology he has in mind is clearly the structuralism
of Claude Levi-Strauss. See Foucault 1973: 373-87.
XVlll D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

instead an early, somewhat brash formulation of the his­

toricity and historical variability of the form and substance
of our comprehension of ourselves as subjects, then it
remains very much of a piece with Foucault's broader pro­
ject, as Maurice Florence would have it be. It remains just
as much of a piece with the Rousselian detachment of
being from language that Foucault spells out so rigorously
in Death and the Labyrinth, this most personal book, but still
avows not to be at all inclined to take personally. Foucault
never makes public, in anything that might unambigu­
ously be registered as his own voice, a general theory of
reference (or non-reference) against which the sincerity
or self-awareness of his avowal might be assessed, might be
policed. But there is no need to police (at least in this
instance) . It is enough to note an enduring, though par­
tial, parallel. Foucault's Roussel is forever troubled by the
unsuitability of words to things, forever bearing anxious
witness to the incapacity of words to capture the intrinsic
particularity of every particular thing. He thus finds him­
self corroborating the cardinal postulates of a quite strong
version of what usually passes for "nominalism."
Foucault's Roussel is a committed nominalist, even if an
unwilling and fretful one.
The suspicion in which Foucault himself holds Man in
The Order of Things is not first of all the suspicion of a
nominalist. The problem with Man is first of all that he is a
paradoxical being. Yet, Man is also posited as a universal,
and the problem with his universality is that it is a false
universality. Man is a type of being whose putative
tokens-we who are human beings-are not genuine. We
cannot be so easily encompassed, if we can be
encompassed at all. Sotto voce, a suspicion of nominalist
temper can thus be detected in The Order of Things. It
can be detected in Foucault's occasional, and occasion­
ally withering, estimations of nineteenth-century and
General Introduction XIX

twentieth-century "humanism."* Arguably at least, the

same suspicion flows as a forceful critical undercurrent in
all of Foucault's investigations into the constitution of the
human sciences and proto-sciences, and so in all the
books noted by Monsieur Florence. In every instance,
Foucault devotes scrupulous attention to the coalescence
and systematization of naturalized kinds of human beings
that would, once presumptively complete, range exhaust­
ively over humanity as a whole, leaving none of its particu­
lar expressions undocumented or uncoded or at large.
The great, unbridgeable divide-the divide within Man­
that presides over such systematization is the presump­
tively universal divide between the "normal" and the
"pathological. " In Madness and Civilization, it marks off the
exclusive domain of "reason" from all "unreason." In The
Birth of the Clinic <1 975) , it marks the contest between the
organic and the anti-organic and incommensurability of
the somatic and the psychosomatic. In Discipline and Pun­
ish <1 979) , it marks the opposition between the docility of
the upright character and the savagery or corruption or
intransigence of the criminal character. In the first volume
of The History of Sexuality, it marks the irrevocable differ­
ence between a vital sexuality-which can only be a het­
erosexuality-and the sterile sexualities of the inverted
and the perverse. In every instance, the divide in question
has served as the basis of an apparatus for the justification
of intervention, domination, and exclusion. In every
instance, the divide fosters a violence that is also onto­
logical-a violence against the particularity of each body
and of its experience of itself. Even so, it is only after the

* Sufficiently characteristic is Foucault's comment to an Italian interviewer: "you

know that it's precisely . .. humanism that served to justifY, in 1 948, Stalinism and
the hegemony of Christian Democracy, that it's humanism itself that we find again
in Camus or Sartre's existentialism.In the end, this humanism constitutes a sort of
little prostitute of all the thought, all the culture, all the morals, all the politics of
the last twenty years" (Foucault 1 994: 615-16).
XX D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

completion of the first volume of The History of Sexuality

that nominalism comes fully to the surface in Foucault's
writings. Only in an early draft of the preface to the sec­
ond volume of that History does Foucault affirm that "a
'nominalist' reduction of philosophical anthropology and
the notions that could rest upon it" had always been part
of the task he had set himself in undertaking a critical
"history of thought."*
Why so belated an affirmation? Is it too philosophical?
Is it too Rousselian-though, once again, it includes no
mention and no obvious allusion to either Roussel or his
oeuvre? Is it thus too personal? Whatever else might be
said, Foucault's relationship to Roussel is noticeably pro­
tective. Perhaps it is self-protective, but its most telling ges­
ture is that of a hand-or pen-raised against any and all
of those roving psychologists who would dismiss Roussel's
madness as mere pathology or treat (and so invalidate) his
oeuvre as a mere catalogue of symptoms. Indeed, Foucault
proposes that Roussel's suicide in Palermo is such a ges­
ture in its own right, a corporal demonstration of the
imperative that the oeuvre "must be set free from the
person who wrote it" (156). Whether or not Roussel's
suicide-which may not have been quite so deliberate as
Foucault would have it be-has just this illocutionary
force, Death and the Labyrinth is true to it, under its influ­
ence. In its pages, Roussel's oeuvre includes both his life
and his writings, but the life only as the most abstract of
experiential impetuses and the most abstract of philo­
sophical punctuations of the writings themselves. In fact,
the liberation of the oeuvre from the person who wrote it

* See Foucault 1997a: 200. See also Foucault 1997b: 73-4, where nominalism is put
forth merely as a "methodological" principle. See also my "Introduction" to the
second volume of Essential Works (Faubion 1998: xxxvii). It is of interest that no
mention of nominalism is to be found explicitly in the preface Foucault finally
included in the second volume of The History of Sexuality.
General Introduction XXI

is an imperative that Foucault had already taken as his own

in Madness and Civilization (1965: 28-9) . In 1962, he
wielded it as a commandment in his review of a study of
Holderlin (1998h) and in his introduction to an edition of
Rousseau's Dialogues (1998e) . Seven years later, he
remains obedient to it in proposing to put historically and
sociologically under review the very idea of the author as
an "originating subject" ( 1998k: 221) . The imperative has
thus become methodological, and will come shortly to
drive both the design and the (suspended) conclusions of
the collaborative efforts collected in I, Pierre Riviere ( 1 982) .
Only if one fails to catch what is still a Rousselian echo
might one fail to recognize that the imperative is also eth­
ical, and that it is addressed specifically to the ethics of the
relationship between a reader and what (or whom) he or
she reads. If it is not the first, it is the most distinctive of
the directives of Foucault's own ethics of reading.

Is there a bit of a Rousselian obsession with visibility in

Foucault's fascination with the "medical gaze" in The Birth
ofthe Clinic or his fascination with the panoptic in Discipline
and Punish? Does a bit of Roussel's "radiant and sovereign
sun" lie behind Foucault's conceptualization of the rela­
tion between the sovereign organization of power and the
aesthetics of the spectacle, also in Discipline and Punish? Do
Roussel's machines inspire Foucault's conceptualization
of the "apparatus," yet again in Discipline and Punish?
Rather than risk descending into parlor games, it is best to
return to a question that might more readily permit of
something resembling an answer. Is the Rousselian cos­
mos actually Foucault's? Is it the cosmos contained in what
is left to us as Foucault's own oeuvre? No, it is not. There is
far too much being in the former and far too much history
in the latter, far too much of the fabulous in the former
and far too much of the ironical in the latter, for such an
XXll D EATH A N D THE LABYRINTH

equation to be anything more than partial. Roussel's

oeuvre is rather a portion of Foucault's dark matter. It is
the stuff of the occasional eruption, of the occasional
black hole, of stars and planets largely faint and distant. Its
elements endure, but never without synthesis. Its forces
undulate to the farthest reaches of Foucauldean expanses,
but never without modulation. These qualifications aside,
it also populates those expanses with a youthful Eros, even
with a Zeus, that god of lightning and justice. In the cos­
mos of Foucault's oeuvre, youthful and mature, these are
powerful gods, besieged but immortal.
 Chronology of
Foucault's Life and
*

Work
15 October, 1926 Born to Paul-Michel Foucault and
Anne-Marie Malapert in Poitiers, France.
Summer, 1946 Entry into the Ecole normale superieure,
Paris.
1948 Receives the licence in philosophy from the
Sorbonne.
1949 Revises his thesis for the diplome d 'etudes supirieures
in philosophy under one of his cherished mentors,
Jean Hippolyte.
1952 Completes the diplOme in psychopathology at the
Institut de psychopathologie in Paris; begins
teaching in the Faculty of Letters at Lille.

* Derived from the Chronology compiled by Daniel

Defert in Michel Foucault, Dits et ecrits, ed. Daniel Defert
and Fran.;ois Ewald, Volume 1, pp. 13-64 (Bibliotheques
des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 1994).
XXlV DEATH A N D THE L A B Y R I N T H
1 953 Completes the diplome in experimental psychology
at the Institut; offers a course at the Ecole normale
superieure.
1 954 Publishes his first book (a revision of which will
later be translated into English as Mental Illness and
Psychology) and a long introduction to the French
translation of the German existential psychoanalyst
Ludgwig Binswanger's Traum und Existenz.
1 955 Assumes a post at the University of Uppsala,
Sweden; begins three years as the director of the
Uppsala Maison de France, an institute for the
promotion of French culture.
1 957 Encounters Raymond Roussel's La Vue; completes
a draft of Folie et Deraison (which will become Mad­
ness and Civilization in English) .
1 958 Spends a soj ourn lecturing and traveling in Poland;
shows Folie et Deraison to the French historian of
science Georges Canguilhem, who sees no need for
revision.
1 960 Completes his these secondaire on Immanuel Kant's
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, never
published; assumes a post at a provincial university
but continues to live in Paris.
1 961 Submits Folie et Deraison to his Sorbonne commit­
tee; enjoys positive reviews upon its publication.
1962 Befriends the philosopher Gilles Deleuze; gives a
manuscript of Birth of the Clinic to his former pro­
fessor, political theorist Louis Althusser.
1 963 Sees the publication of Raymond Roussel and Birth of
the Clinic; begins the prodigious research for what
will become Les Mots et les choses; encounters the
painting that will occupy its first pages, Velasquez's
Las Meninas, during a visit to the Prado in Madrid.
1 966 With Deleuze, begins work on a French edition of
Nietzsche's complete works; sees Les Mots et les
Chronology of Foucault 's Life and Work XXV

choses into print; finds himself labeled a "structural­

ist" and, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, "the last
rampart of the bourgeoisie"; departs France in the
autumn for a three-year sojourn in Tunisia.
1968 Returns in the aftermath of the student revolts to
assume a post at the U niversity of Nanterrre.
1969 Receives largely tepid reviews of The Archaeology of
Knowledge.
1970 Accepts the nomination to a chair in the History of
Systems of Thought at the most distinguished of
French universities, the College de France; visits
and lectures in Japan; delivers a version of "What Is
an Author?" at SU NY Buffalo.
1971 Has his home serve as the seat of a newly founded
prisoners' advocacy group, the Groupe d 'information
sur les prisons ; engages in diverse dialogues with the
French Maoists; begins a course on "penal theories
and institutions" at the College; begins an
acquaintance with writer Jean Genet; in the Neth­
erlands, engages in a televised debate with Noam
Chomsky.
1973 Visits Montreal and Brazil for the first time; wit­
nesses the broad and enthusiastic reception of <
Pierre Riviere . . . in France.
1975 Provokes controversy with the publication of Discip­
line and Punish; visits Berkeley and other California
universities; proposes a chair for Roland Barthes at
the College.
1976 Works with Michelle Perrot and Jean-Pierre
Barouh on a reissue of Jeremy Bentham's Panopti­
con; provokes controversy again with the
publication of the first volume of The History of
Sexuality.
1978 Inaugurates the theme of governmentality with a
course on "security, territory and population" at
XXVI D EATH AND THE LABYRINTH

the College; begins to trace the genealogy of sexual­

ity back toward antiquity; visits Iran in the months
preceding the revolution, which he initially sup­
ports; recovers from the archives and publishes
Herculine Barbin, dite Alexina B., the case of a nine­
teenth-century hermaphrodite; marches in favor of
the acceptance ofVietnamese refugees into France.
1979 Grants an interview published in the first issue of
the first French gay magazine, Le Gai Pied; delivers
the Tanner lectures at Stanford.
1980 Delivers the Howison lectures at Berkeley to an
overflowing crowd; delivers the James lectures at
New York University.
1981 Calls for further support of the Vietnamese; advo­
cates the cause of the Polish Solidarity movement.
1982 With historian Arlette Farge, publishes Le Desordre
des families a collective commentary on a corpus of
"poison-pen letters" recovered from the Bastille
archives (not yet translated into English) .
1983 Delivers the Regent's Lectures at Berkeley in the
spring; Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow publish
the record of his discussions with American inter­
locutors during the period as Michel Foucault, un
parcours philosophique the following year; begins to
suffer from persistent respiratory ailments.
1984 Temporarily revived with treatment, completes The
History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure,
and The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of
the Self; abandons hope of completing the fourth
volume, to have been entitled The Confessions of
the Flesh; hospitalized on June 3rd, Foucault dies
twenty-two days later, not of cancer-persistent
rumors and media reports (which misled Charles
Ruas among others) aside-but of a septicemia
characteristic of AIDS.
 Translator's
Acknowledgements

Michel Foucault gave his generous assistance to this project.

His untimely death makes us realize all that we have lost.
I want to thank john Ashbery for contributing his pion­
eering essay on Raymond Roussel as the introduction to
this volume, as well as for giving us access to his Roussel
archives.
In my work I have followed Trevor Winkfield's brilliant
translation of How I Wrote Certain of My Books by Raymond
Roussel. I have also quoted from Kenneth Koch's transla­
tion of Canto III of Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique, which is
reprinted in the appendix to Trevor Winkfield's
translation.
For the novels by Ramond Roussel I relied upon Lindy
Foard and Rayner Heppenstall's translation of Impressions
of Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor­
nia Press, 1967) and Rupert Copeland Cuningham's
x xv i i i D E AT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

translation o f Locus Solus ( New York: Riverrun Press,

1983).
I want to express my gratitude to the following people
for their contribution to this project: Juris Jmjevics,
Douglas Stumpf, Fran McCullough, Shaye Areheart,
Joellyn Ausanka, and most of all Rob Wynne for his
unfailing encouragement.
 Death and
the Labyrinth
THE WORLD OF
RAYMOND ROUSSEL
 1
The Threshold
and the Key

T H E woRK 1 s given to us divided just before the end by a

statement that undertakes to explain how . . . This How I
Wrote Certain of My Books,* which came to light after every­
thing else was written , bears a strange relationship to the
work whose mechanism it reveals by covering it in an
autobiographical narrative at once hasty, modest, and
meticulous.
Roussel seems to respect chronological order; in explain­
ing his work he follows the thread leading directly from his
early stories to the just-published Nouvelles Impressions
d 'Afrique (New Impressions of Mrica) . Yet the structure of
the discourse seems to be contradicted by its internal
logic. In the foreground, writ large, is the process he used
to compose his early writings; then, in ever-narrowing
degrees, come the mechanisms he used to create the novels
Impressions d 'Afrique (Impressions ofMrica) and Locus Solus
* Raymond Roussel, How I Wrote Certain ofMy Book, translated from the French, with
notes, by Trevor Winkfield (New York: SUN, 1975, 1977).
< D E A T H A N D THE L A B Y R I N TH

(Solitary Place) , which is barely outlined. On the horizon,

where language disappears in time, his most recent
texts-the plays La Poussiere de Soleils (Motes in Sunbeams)
and L Etoile au Front ( Star on the Forehead) -are mere
specks. As for the poem Nouvelles Impressions, which has
retreated to the far side of the horizon, it can be identified
only by what it is not. The basic gemetry of this "revela­
tion" reverses the triangle of time. By a complete revolu­
tion, the near becomes distant, as if only in the outer
windings of the labyrinth Roussel can play the guide. He
leaves off just as the path approaches the center where he
himself stands, holding all the threads at their point of
entanglement or-who knows?-their greatest simplicity.
At the moment of his death, in a gesture both cautious
and illuminating, Roussel holds up to his work a mirror
possessed of a bizarre magic: it pushes the central figure
into the background where the lines are blurred, placing
the point of revelation at the farthest distance, while
bringing forward, as if for extreme myopia, whatever is
farthest from the moment of its utterance. Yet as the sub­
ject approaches, the mirror deepens in secrecy.
The secret is darker still: the solemn finality of its form
and the care with which it was withheld throughout the
body of his work, only to be given up at the moment of his
death, transforms what is revealed into an enigma.
Lyricism is carefully excluded from How I Wrote Certain of
My Books (the quotations from Dr. Janet that Roussel used to
speak about what was undoubtedly the pivotal experience
of his life attest to the rigor of this exclusion) ; there is
information in the essay, but no confidences; and yet some­
thing definitely is confided through this strange form of
the secret that death would preserve and make known.
"And I take comfort, for want of anything better, in the
hope that perhaps I will have a little posthumous fame with
regard to my books." The "how" that Roussel inscribes in
The Threshold and the Key 5
the tide of his last, revelatory work introduces not only the
secret of his language, but also his relationship with such a
secret, not to lead us to it, but rather to leave us disarmed
and completely confused when it comes to determining the
nature of the reticence which held the secret in a reserve
suddenly abandoned.
His first sentence, "I have always intended to explain
how I wrote certain of my books," clearly shows that his
statements were not accidental, nor made at the last min­
ute, but were an essential part of the work and the most
constant aspect of his intention. Since his final revelation
and original intention now becomes the inevitable and
ambiguous threshold through which we are initiated into
his work while forming its conclusion, there is no doubt it
is deceptive: by giving us a key to explain the work, it poses
a second enigma. It dictates an uneasy awareness for the
reading of the work: a resdess awareness since the secret
cannot be found in the riddles and charades that Roussel
was so fond of; it is carefully detailed for a reader who
willingly lets the cat take his tongue before the end of the
game, but it is Roussel who takes the reader's tongue for
the cat. He forces the reader to learn a secret that he had
not recognized and to feel trapped in an anonymous,
amorphous, now-you-see-it-now-you-don' t, never really
demonstrable type of secret. If Roussel of his own free will
said that there was a secret, one could suppose that he
completely divulged it by admitting it and saying what it
was, or else he shifted it, extended and multiplied it, while
withholding the principle of the secret and its conceal­
ment. Here the impossibility of coming to a decision links
all discourse about Roussel with the common risk of being
wrong and of being deceived less by a secret than by the
awareness that there is secrecy.
In 1932 Roussel sent his printer a portion of the text
which would become, after his death, How I Wrote Certain of
6 D EAT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I NTH

My Books. It was understood that these pages would not be

published during his lifetime. The pages were not awaiting
his death; rather, this decision was already within them, no
doubt because of the immediacy of the revelation they con­
tained. When, on May 30, 1933, he decided what the struc­
ture of the book would be, he had long since made plans
never to return to Paris. During the month of June he
settled in Palermo, where he spent every day drugged and
in an intense state of euphoria. He attempted to kill him­
self, or to have himself killed, as if now he had acquired
"the taste for death which hitherto he feared." On the
morning he was due to leave his hotel for a drug cure at
Kreuzlingen, he was found dead: in spite of his extreme
weakness, he had dragged himself and his mattress against
the door communicating with the adjoining room of his
companion Charlotte Dufrene. This door, which had been
open at all times, was locked from the inside. The death,
the lock, and this closed door formed, at that moment and
for all time, an enigmatic triangle where Roussel's work is
both offered to and withdrawn from us. Whatever is under­
standable in his language speaks to us form a threshold
where access is inseparable from what constitutes its bar­
rier-access and barrier in themselves equivocal since in
this indecipherable act the question remains, to what end?
To release this death so long dreaded and now so sud­
denly desired? Or perhaps also to discover anew this life
from which he had attempted furiously to free himself,
but which he had also long dreamed of prolonging into
eternity through his work and through the ceaseless, meti­
culous, fantastic constructions of the works themselves? Is
there any other key, apart from the one in this last text,
which is there, standing right up against the door? Is it
signaling to open-or motioning to close? Is it holding a
simple key which is marvelously ambiguous, ready in one
turn either to lock in or to open up? Is it carefully shut on
The Threshold and the Key 7
an irrevocable death, or is it transm1ttmg beyond that
death the exalted state of mind whose memory had stayed
with Roussel since he was nineteen and whose illumin­
ation he had always sought to recover in vain-except
perhaps on this one night?
It is curious that Roussel, whose language is extremely
precise, said that How I Wrote Certain of My Books was a
"secret and posthumous" text. No doubt he meant several
things other than the obvious meaning, which is secret
until death: that death was a ritual part of the secret, its
prepared threshold and its solemn conclusion. Perhaps he
meant that the secret would remain secret even in death,
giving it an added twist, by which the "posthumous" inten­
sified the "secret" and made it definitive; or even better,
death would reveal that there is a secret without showing
what it hides, only what makes it opaque and impene­
trable. He would keep the secret by revealing that it is
secret, only giving us the epithet but retaining the sub­
stance. We are left with nothing, questioning a perplexing
indiscretion, a key which is itself locked up, a cipher which
deciphers and yet is encoded.
How I Wrote Certain of My Books hides as much, if not
more, than it promises to reveal. It only gives us fragments
of a breakdown of memory, which makes it necessary, as
Roussel said, to use "ellipsis." However general his omis­
sions may be, they are only superficial compared to a
more fundamental one, arbitrarily indicated by his simple
exclusion, without comment, of a whole series of works. "It
goes without saying that my other books, La Doublure [The
Lining/The Rehearsal/The Understudy] , La Vue [The
View/The Lens/The Vision] , and Nouvelles Impressions
d 'Afrique, are absolutely outside of this process." Also out­
side of the secret are three poetical texts, L 'Inconsolable
(The Inconsolable) , Les Tetes de Carton du Carnaval de Nice
(Cardboard Heads of the Carnival in Nice ) , and the first
8 D E A T H A N D THE L A B Y R I N TH

poem written by Roussel, Mon A me (My Soul) . What secret

underlies his action of setting them aside, satisfied with a
simple reference but without a word of explanation? Do
these works hide a key of a different nature, or is it the
same, but doubly hidden, to the extent of denying its
existence? Could there perhaps be a master key which
would reveal a silent law to identify the works coded and
decoded by Roussel, and those whose code is not to have
any evident code? The idea of a key, as soon as it is formu­
lated, eludes its promise, or rather takes it beyond what it
can deliver to a point where all of Roussel's language is
placed in question.
There is a strange power in this text whose purpose is to
"explain. " So doubtful is its status, its point of origin,
where it makes its disclosures and defines its boundaries,
the space that at the same time it upholds and under­
mines, that after the initial dazzling there is but one effect:
to create doubt, to disseminate it by a concerted omission
when there was no reason for it, to insinuate it into what
ought to be protected from it, and to plant it even in the solid
ground of its own foundation. How I Wrote Certain ofMy Books
is, after all, one of his books. Doesn't this text of the unveiled
secret also hold its own secret, exposed and masked at the
same time by the light it sheds on the other works?
From this ambiguous situation one could define certain
forms for which Roussel's works would provide the models.
( Is it not, after all, the secret's secret?) Perhaps beneath
the process revealed in this last text, another set of laws
governs even more secretly and in a completely unfore­
seen way. The structure would be exactly that of Impres­
sions d 'Afrique or of Locus Solus. The scenes performed on
stage at the Theater of the Incomparables or the machines
in the garden of Martial Canterel have an apparent narra­
tive explanation-an event, a legend, a memory, or a
book-which justifies the episodes; but the real key-or in
The Threshold and the Key 9
any case, another key at a more profound level-opens
the text in all its force and reveals, beneath its marvels, the
muffled phonetic explosion of arbitrary sentences. Per­
haps in the end, his whole body of work is based on this
model: How I Wrote Certain of My Books has the same func­
tion as the second part of Impressions d 'Afrique and the
explanatory narratives of Locus Solus, hiding, beneath the
pretext of giving an explanation, the underground force
from which his language springs.
It could also be that the revelations made in How I Wrote
Certain of My Books have only a preparatory value, telling a
kind of salutary lie-a partial truth, which signifies that
one must look further and in greater depth. Then the
work would be constructed on multilevels of secrecy, one
ordering the other, but without any one of them having a
universal value or being absolutely revelatory. By giving us
a key at the last moment, this final text would be like a first
retrospective of the works with a dual purpose: it opens
the structure of certain texts at the level closest to the
surface, but indicates for these and the other works the
need for a series of keys, each of which would open its own
box, but not the smallest, best protected, most precious
one contained inside. This image of enclosure is common
with Roussel. It is used with great care in Documents pour
Servir de Canevas (Documents to Serve as Canvas) ; La Pous­
siere de Soleils aptly uses it as a method for discovering a
secret. In Nouvelles Impressions it takes the strange form of
ever-expanding elucidations always interrupted by the
parenthesis of a new light shed on the subject. Each light
in turn is broken by a parenthesis of another brightness,
originating from the preceding one, which is held sus­
pended and fragmented for a long time. This succession
of disruptive and explosive lights forms an enigmatic text,
both luminous and shadowy, which these ordered open­
ings transform into an impregnable fortress.
10 D E A TH A N D THE L A B Y R I N TH

This process can serve as the beginning and the ending

of the text, which was the function of the identical
ambiguous sentences he used in his youth to frame brief
narratives. It can form the necessary perimeter while leav­
ing free the core of language, the field of imagination,
without needing any key other than its own game. The
process would then function to protect and to release. It
would delineate a privileged place, beyond reach, whose
rigorous outward form would free it from all external
constraints. This self-containment would disconnect the
language from all contact, induction, surreptitious com­
munication, and influence, giving it an absolutely neutral
space in which to fully develop. The process then would
not determine the central configuration of the work, but
would only be its threshold, to be crossed the moment it is
drawn-more a rite of purification than an architectural
structure. Then Roussel would have used it to frame the
great ritual of his entire work, repeating it solemnly for
everyone once he had completed the cycle for himself.
The process would encircle the work, only letting the initi­
ated have access into the void and completely enigmatic
space of the ritualized work, which is to say, isolated, but
not explained. How I Wrote Certain of My Books can be
likened to the lens of La Vue: a minuscule surface that must
be penetrated by looking through it in order to make vis­
ible a whole dimension disproportionate to it, and yet
which can neither be fixed, nor examined, nor preserved
without it. Perhaps the process no more resembles the
work itself than the small lens does the seascape of La Vue
which is brought to light, revealed, and held-on condi­
tion that its essential threshold is crossed with a glance.
Roussel's "revelatory" text is so reserved in its description
of the action of the process in the work, and in turn the
text is so verbose in types of deciphering, rites of threshold
and lock, that it is difficult to relate How I Wrote Certain of
The Threshold and the Key 1 1

My Books to these particular books and to the others as

well. Its positive function of giving an explanation as well
as a formula-"lt seems to me that it's my duty to reveal it,
for I have the impression that writers of the future will
perhaps be able to exploit it fruitfully"-quickly becomes
a never-ending play of indecision, similar to that
uncertain gesture on his last night, when Roussel, at the
threshold, wanted perhaps to open the door, perhaps to
lock it. In a way, Roussel's attitude is the reverse of Kafka's,
but as difficult to interpret. Kafka had entrusted his manu­
scripts to Max Brod to be destroyed after his death-to
Max Brod, who had said he would never destroy them.
Around his death Roussel organized a simple explanatory
essay which is made suspect by the text, his other books,
and even the circumstances of his death.
Only one thing is certain: this "posthumous and secret"
book is the final and indispensable element of Roussel's
language. By giving a "solution" he turns each word into a
possible trap, which is the same as a real trap, since the
mere possibility of a false bottom opens, for those who
listen, a space of infinite uncertainty. This does not put in
question the existence of the key process nor Roussel's
meticulous listing of facts, but in retrospect it does give his
revelation a disquieting quality.
All these perspectives-it would be comforting to close
them off, to suppress all the openings, and to allow Rous­
sel to escape by the one exit that our conscience-seeking
respite-will grant him.
Andre Breton wrote, in Fronton Virage (The Wall at the
Bend in the Road) , "Is it likely that a man outside of all
traditions of initiation should consider himself bound to
carry to his grave a secret of another order . . . is it not
more tempting to assume that Roussel obeyed, in the cap­
acity of an initiate, a word of irrefutable command?" Of
course-everything would be strangely simplified then,
l2 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

and the work would close upon a secret whose forbidden

nature alone would indicate its existence, essence, con­
tent, and necessary ritual. And in relation to this secret all
of Roussel's texts would be just so much rhetorical skill,
revealing, to whoever knows how to read what they say, the
simple, extraordinarily generous fact that they don't say it.
At the absolute limit it could be that the "chain of
events" of La Poussiere de Soleils has something in com­
mon-in its form-with the progression in the practice of
alchemy, even if there is little chance that the twenty-two
changes of scenes dictated by the staging of the play cor­
respond to the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana in a
tarot deck. It is possible that certain outward signs of the
esoteric process might have been used as models for the
double play on words, coincidence and encounters at the
opportune moment, the linking of the twists and turns of
the plot, and the didactic voyages through banal objects
having marvelous stories which define their true value by
describing their origins, revealing in each of them mythical
avatars which lead them to the promise of actual freedom.
But if Roussel did use such material, and it is not at all
certain that he did, it would have been in the way he used
stanzas of "Au clair de la lune' and ''j'ai du bon tabac" in his
Impressions d 'Afrique, not to convey the content through an
external and symbolic language in order to disguise it, but
to set up an additional barrier within the language, part of
a whole system of invisible paths, evasions, and subtle
defenses.
Like an arrow, Roussel's language is opposed-by its
direction more than by its substance-to an occult lan­
guage. It is not built on the certainty that there is secrecy,
only one secret that is wisely kept silent; on the surface it
sparkles with a glaring doubt and hides an internal void: it
is impossible to know whether there is a secret or none, or
several, and what they are. Any affirmation that a secret
The Threshold and the Key
exists, any definition of its nature, dries up Roussel's work
at its source, preventing it from coming to life out of this
void which it animates without ever satisfying our troubled
ignorance. In the reading, his works promise nothing.
There's only an inner awareness that by reading the
words, so smooth and aligned, we are exposed to the unal­
layed danger of reading other words which are both dif­
ferent and the same. His work as a whole, supported by
How I Wrote Certain of My Books and all the undermining
doubts sown by that text, systematically imposes a formless
anxiety, diverging and yet centrifugal, directed not toward
the most withheld secrets but toward the imitation and the
transmutation of the most visible forms: each word at the
same time energized and drained, filled and emptied by
the possibility of there being yet another meaning, this
one or that one, or neither one nor the other, but a third,
or none.
 2
The Cushions of
the Billiard Table

T H E RE 1 s a shipwrecked European who is captured by a

black chieftain. With a miraculous supply of ink and
paper, and using pigeons as messengers, he sends his wife
a long series of letters describing savage battles and canni­
bal feasts, with the chieftain as the loathsome hero. Rous­
sel says it all better and faster: "The white man 's letters on
the hordes of the old plunderer" <les lettres du blanc sur les
bandes du vieux pillard) .
Now "the white letters on the cushions of the old bil­
liard table" <les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du vieux billard)
are the printed letters drawn in chalk on the sides of the
slightly moth-eaten green felt covering of a large billiard
table when, to entertain a group of friends confined in a
country house on a rainy afternoon, you have them solve a
rebus; but, too inept to draw realistic figures, they are
asked only to form coherent words from the letters scat­
tered along the perimeter of the large rectangle .
The infinitesimal but immense distance between these
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

two phrases will give rise to some of Roussel's most famil­

iar themes: imprisonment and liberation, exoticism, cryp­
tograms, torture by language and redemption by that
same language, and the sovereignty of words whose
enigma conjures up scenes like the one of guests silently
circling the billiard table in a sort of dance, in which the
phrase tries to reconstitute itself. All this forms the natural
landscape of Roussel's four major works, the four great
texts which adhere to the process: Impressions d 'Afrique,
Locus Solus, L Etoile au Front, and La Poussiere de Soleils.
The prisons, the human machines, the tortuous
ciphers, the whole network of words, secrets, and signs
issue marvelously from a single fact of language, a series of
identical words with two different meanings, the tenuous­
ness of our language which, sent in two different direc­
tions, is suddenly brought up short, face-to-face with itself
and forced to meet again. Yet it could as easily be said that
it has a remarkable richness, since as soon as this ordinary
group of words is considered, a whole flurry of semantic
differences is released. There are letters (epistolary) and
letters (graphic) . There are the green felt cushions, and
the howling savages of the cannibal king. The identity of
words-the simple, fundamental fact of language, that
there are fewer terms of designation than there are things
to designate-is itself a two-sided experience: it reveals
words as the unexpected meeting place of the most distant
figures of reality. (It is distance abolished; at the point of
contact, differences are brought together in a unique
form: dual, ambiguous, Minotaur-like. ) It demonstrates
the duality of language which starts from a simple core,
divides itself in two, and produces new figures. ( It's a pro­
liferation of distance, a void created in the wake of the
double, a labyrinthine extension of corridors which seem
similar and yet are different.) In their wealth of poverty
words always refer away from and lead back to themselves;
The Cushions of the Billiard Table
they are lost and found again; they fix a vanishing point on
the horizon by repeated division, and then return to the
starting point in a perfect curve. The mystified guests
must have realized this while going around the billiard
table , when they discovered that the straight line of words
was identical to their circular path.
Eighteenth-century grammarians well understood this
marvelous property of language to extract wealth from its
own poverty. In their purely empirical concept of signs,
they admired the way a word was capable of separating
itself from the visible form to which it was tied by its "sig­
nification" in order to settle on another form, designating
it with an ambiguity which is both its resource and limita­
tion. At that point language indicates the source of an
internal movement; its ties to its meaning can undergo a
metamorphosis without its having to change its form, as if
it had turned in on itself, tracing around a fixed point (the
"meaning" of the word, as they used to say) a circle of
possibilities which allows for chance, coincidence, effects,
and all the rules of the game.
Let's consult Dumarsais,* one of the subtlest grammar­
ians of the period: "The same words obviously had to be
used in different ways. It's been found that this admirable
expedient could make discourse more energetic and
pleasing. Nor has it been overlooked that it could be
turned into a game and a source of pleasure. Thus by
necessity and by choice, words are often turned away from
their original meaning to take on a new one which is more
or less removed but that still maintains a connection. This
new meaning is called 'tropological, ' and this conversion,
this turning away which produces it, is called a 'trope. ' " In
the space created by this displacement, all the forms of
rhetoric come to life-the twists and turns, as Dumarsais

* Cesar Dumarsais, Les Tropes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1 8 1 8) . The first edition is dated 1 75-.
 D E A T H A N D THE L A B Y R I N TH

would put it: catachresis, metonymy, metalepsis, syn­

ecdoche, antonomasia, litotes, metaphors, hypallage, and
many other hieroglyphs drawn by the rotation of words
into the voluminous mass of language.
Roussel's experiment is located in what could be called
the "tropological space" of vocabulary. It's not quite the
grammarian's space, or rather it is this same space, but
treated differently. It is not where the canonical figures of
speech originate, but that neutral space within language
where the hollowness of the word is shown as an insidious
void, arid and a trap. Roussel considers this game, which
rhetoric exploited to extend its meaning, as a gap that
is stretched open as wide as possible and meticulously
measured. He felt there is, beyond the quasi-liberties of
expression, an absolute emptiness of being that he must
surround, dominate, and overwhelm with pure invention:
that is what he calls, in opposition to reality, thought
("With me imagination is everything") . He doesn' t want to
duplicate the reality of another world, but, in the sponta­
neous duality of language, he wants to discover an unex­
pected space, and to cover it with things never said before.
The forms he will construct above this void will method­
ically reverse the "elements of style." Style is-according to
the necessity of the words used-the possibility, masked
and identified at the same time, of saying the same thing
but in other ways. All of Roussel's language, in its reversal
of style, surreptitiously tries to say two things with the same
words. The twisting, slight turn of words which ordinarily
allows them to make a tropological "move" that brings
into play their fundamenta:l freedom is used by Roussel to
form an inexorable circle which returns words to their
point of origin by force of his constraining rules.
But to return to our double-faceted sequence, one aspect
black and cannibal from Mrica, the other aspect the green
of the billiard cryptogram, they are set down twice like two
The Cushions of the Billiard Table
series identical in form but as far apart in meaning as is
possible. (The approximation of billard = pillard [billiard =
plunderer] will be discussed later. It is obviously not an
easy task to proceed in an orderly fashion without looking
forward or backward in a body of work so closely bound,
so uniform, so economical in means and always self­
referring. ) This opens a chasm in the identity of language,
a void that has to be revealed and at the same time filled.
Thus it could as well be said: "A blanc (white) to fill with
lettres (letters) from one bande (cushion) to the other." (I
am not bringing a new development into play with a third
set of meanings for these words; I simply want to high­
light the "self-referential, " as logicians used to call it, the
unique identity which Roussel's works always manifest with
vibrancy. ) Thus "the two found phrases: it was a matter of
writing a tale that could begin with the first and conclude
with the second. It was from the resolution of this problem
that I drew all my materials. " The narrative begins with the
illegible scrawl on the billiard table, and without interrup­
tion in meaning will end with the airborne epistles.
Nothing is simpler: this rule is applied in the three nar­
ratives published between 1900 and 190 7-Chiquenaude
(Snap of the Fingers) , Nanon, and Une Page de Folklore Breton
(A Page of Folklore from Brittany) , and in the seventeen
texts which Roussel claims are "from his early youth."
These were not brought out before the posthumous pub­
lication of How I Wrote Certain ofMy Books. The date of their
composition has not been established, nor whether indeed
they were written when Roussel was still very young. Per­
haps they were written well before La Doublure, which was
composed and published around his twentieth year. Writ­
ten well before all his major works and repeated again by
their publication at the time of his death, they would frame
all of Roussel's language, showing at once his point of
departure and of arrival, rather like the way his homonym
20 D EATH A N D T H E LABYRINTH

sentences bracket the narratives which they compose. The

word play jeunesse = genese (youth = genesis) , used by
Roussel when he speaks about them in his last work, would
seem to indicate that their publication at just that moment
also refers to their internal structure.
According to his autobiography Roussel gave up music
at seventeen "in order to devote myself to writing poetry."
From that moment an "obsession with work" over­
whelmed him: "I worked, so to speak, night and day, for
months, which culminated in my writing La Doublure." Yet
all "the texts from early youth" are written in prose. It
doesn't seem likely that they were written in the time
between his conversion to poetry and the writing, in
alexandrine verse, of La Doublure.
It seems rather as if Roussel wrote them after "his fright­
ful nervous disorder," following the failure of his first work,
during a period he simply describes as "several years [of]
prospecting." This is the period between 1 898 and 1 900.
It's as if this crisis, seen perhaps in La Doublur�with its
play of actors and understudies and their double roles, its
cardboard heads, its masks with peering eyes, its dominoes
hiding what they reveal-had already defined this distance
between repetition and double meaning which would run
through all the texts of his earlyyouth and, afterward, all of
Roussel's works. The "tropological" space where his pro­
cess is situated would then be analogous to the idea of a
mask. The hollowness that opens within a word would not
simply be a property of verbal signs, but a more basic
ambiguity, perhaps even more dangerous: it would show
that a word, like a gaudy cardboard face, hides what it dupli­
cates, and is separated from it only by the slightest layer of
darkness. The double meaning of words would be like the
repetition, by the mask on top, of the face. It reveals the
same eclipse of being. The narratives with identical sen­
tences thus renew the experiment of La Doublure: they
The Cushions of the Billiard Table 2l
make this work the secret point of departure for all his
works. "If I'm publishing these texts from my early youth,
it's to highlight the genesis of my works. For example, the
narrative entitled Parmi les Noirs (Among the Blacks) , is
the embryonic form of my book Impressions d 'Afrique.
Everything I 've accomplished since was born of the same
process."
It's curious to see how Michel Leiris, in the admirable
Rules ofthe Game, uses the same tropological space for an ex­
periment that's related and also opposite (the same game
according to another set of rules) : in the shifting of words
which contaminate things-superimposing them into mar­
velous and monstrous figures-he tries to grasp the fleeting
but inevitable truth about what has occurred. From so many
things without any social standing, from so many fantastic
civic records, he slowly accumulates his own identity, as if
within the folds of words there slept, with nightmares never
completely extinguished, an absolute memory. These same
folds Roussel parts with a studied gesture to find the stifling
hollowness, the inexorable absence of being, which he
disposes of imperiously to create forms without parentage
or species. Leiris experiences the fullness of this moment
as an inexhaustible truth in which he can immerse himself
without respite, the same expanse that Roussel' s narratives
cross as if on a tightrope above the void.

Apparently his essays pose no other problems than those

they undertake to resolve. The care with which Roussel
explains the configuration is even surprising: more than
two pages at the beginning of How I Wrote Certain of My
Books, then in the middle of the work a return to it, dis­
cussing the principle of how the first sentence comes back
at the end of the text but loaded with a different meaning,
which is clear enough in each of his narratives so that it's
unnecessary to repeat it in a didactic way: the process is
22 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

evident at the level of words and in the most obvious tum

of the anecdotes. No doubt this principle is only the visible
summit of a whole pyramidal order where each of his tales
finds its basic structure. The key sentence, in opening and
closing the narrative, opens many other locks. Let's bring
to these simple texts the careful scrutiny that Roussel set as
an example.
The ambiguous sentence which prescribes the starting
point of the narrative-the eponymous sentence-gives
rise to several circles which are not identical but crisscross
one another as if to form a strange roseate configuration.
We know the circle of language that connects the same
word to different meanings. Close to it is the circle of time;
that's because the initial sentence appears as an enigma.
"The white letters on the cushions of the old billiard table
formed an incomprehensible grouping." The instant lan­
guage starts, time stops. Turned to stone, the spectacle is
presented not as an effect, but as a sign, a freeze-frame
where one cannot tell what action has been stopped, nor
at which scene. During this pause an enigmatic figure rises
at the threshold of language: a motionless close-up which
withholds its own meaning. At the start of the game lan­
guage functions as if it were denying all meaning, and the
point at which this occurs is initially masked by these
unusual devices which are still silent: "The coils of the enor­
mous python tightened convulsively around the victim the
moment I looked up"; "The palm strokes on the squirting
white teat were skillful and regular"; "The part in the hair
of Rayon-Vert sparkled in the full August light." Starting
from this enigmatic scene ( the rupture of time, the open­
ing of a space, the eruption of things into view without
horizon, the disorientation by the absence of all reference
or proportion) , the language begins to weave its threads
with a double motion of return and retreat. It's the rapid
sweep toward the past, the arc of memory going as far as
The Cushions of the Billiard Table <
necessary to return to a completely clear present. We are
taken back to the starting point which is now the goal: the
eponymous sentence has only to be repeated.
But the moment that time first reasserts itself at the level
of language, language becomes entangled in the differ­
ences in meaning: at the beginning there is a game of
croquet whose goals, striated with colored bands, are at
opposite ends of a garden walk, and at the end there is a
performing dog who draws evenly spaced vertical lines
with multicolored pencils on the white page of a note pad.
It's the "amplitude of the interplay between multicolored
strokes." An innocent pleasantry. A parlor game. The pun­
ishment meted out to schoolboys. Yet between the first and
the last sentence something important has occurred to the
status oflanguage which is difficult to define and pinpoint.
Must it be said that when the narrative is about to return
to the starting point, the words display an ironic burst of
zeal, repeating themselves and signaling with a derogatory
tone (derogatory since the same note at the same reson­
ance means something different) that the narration has
indeed returned to the beginning, and that it is time to
fall silent because the purpose of the language is precisely
to repeat the past? Or could it be that beneath the lan­
guage, at the most natural moment of repetition, a strata­
gem-not entirely mastered even though caused by its
own limitations-is introduced, a slight gap which causes
the same words to mean something else; and, in the end,
is it better to remain silent since it is impossible for lan­
guage to repeat itself exactly? These two possibilities
reinforce each other as open questions; there' s an area of
doubt where words and their meanings change in an
ambiguous relationship to each other, transformed by a
slow rotation which prevents the return of meaning from
coinciding with the return of language.
The uneasiness is not dispelled since the indecision is
24 D EATH AND T H E LABYRINTH

infinite, but systematically reversed in Nouvelles Impressions:

the sequence of comparisons, similes, distinctions, meta­
phors, and analogies filters one, monotonous, persistent
meaning through countless words and objects, through
endless repetitions which affirm, in 415 verses and over 200
examples, thatwhat is big must not be confused with what is
small. Thus the meaning is immobilized beneath the end­
less waves of language. But in Roussel's early works it's just
the opposite. The meaning seems to jump by itself from
between the solid columns of words which hold up the arch
of the narrative at the beginning and at the end. Nouvelles
Impressions is like a negative image of his early works.
In relation to the declared eponymous sentence, there
is an antitext that is not only antimeaning, it is antiexist­
ence, pure negativity. The first sentence (for example,
"The coils of the snake") is always about tangible objects;
the words are laid directly onto things, or rather spring
from them even before their visualization, which always
lags behind, bringing only a persistent silent presence to
what is said: "The greenish skin of the ripening plum
seemed as appetizing as could be wished"; "The spots on
the wool of the big five-legged sheep heightened its
supernatural appearance." The antisentence expresses
what it has to say only through a precautionary ritual, and
each elaboration attenuates its existence. It's no longer a
concrete language referring to things; it comes, not with­
out solemnity, from one of the characters in the story,
generally the narrator. Perhaps in order to achieve a
repetition he needs a protagonist (like Martial Canterel) .
The transition from the initial sentence to the antisentence
is like going from a performance to back stage, from word­
object to word-rejoinder. The result is even more effective
because the sentence being repeated no longer refers to
things themselves but to their reproductions: sketch,
cryptogram, enigma, disguise, theatrical performance, a
The Cushions of the Billiard Table <
spectacle seen through glasses, symbolic image. The ver­
bal doubling is carried on at the level of repetition. This
exact repetition, this faithful double, this repetition of
language has the function of pointing out all the flaws, of
highlighting all the impediments to its being the exact
representation of what it tries to duplicate, or else of fill­
ing the void with an enigma that it fails to solve. The anti­
sentence states the ordered and completed text formed by
the letters of white chalk drawn helter-skelter on the cush­
ions of the billiard table. It shows what is missing in these
letters, what is hidden as well as what can be glimpsed
through them, their black negative and also their positive
and clear meaning: the white letters . . . . This antisentence
also states that the illustrator did not draw in evenly the
spotted mesh on the scales of the fish, that the raindrops
on the cook's umbrella fell with unbelievable violence,
etc. It's as if the function of this doubled language was to
insert itself in the minute separations between the imita­
tion and what it imitates, to bring out the flaws and dupli­
cate that imitation to its greatest extent. Language is a thin
blade that slits the identity of things, showing them as hope­
lessly double and self-divided even as they are repeated,
up to the moment when words return to their identity with
a regal indifference to everything that differs. This fissure
through which is inserted the repetition of words is an
aspect of language itself, the stigma of the power it exerts
on objects, and by which it wounds them. The last sentence,
which denounces the flaw in the duplication of things,
repeats the first sentence with only one difference, which
produces the shift of meaning in the form: the enigma of
the chalk signs on the cushions of the billiard table is covered
over with the letters of the European on the hordes of the
plunderer. There are approximately sixteen others of a
quality no less deplorable: le pepin du citron ( the lemon
seed) , le pepin du mitron (the baker boy's infatuations) ; the
 D E A T H A N D THE L A B Y R I N TH

hook, the pike, the bell, idle chatter; the position of the
red buttons on the masks of the handsome blond favorite;
the position of the red buttons on the Basques, etc.
This minute morphological difference-they are always
present and there's only one per sentence-is essential for
Roussel. It serves as the organizing principle to the whole:
"I would choose two nearly identical words (suggesting
the metagram) . For example, billard and pillard. Then I
would add similar words, selected for two different mean­
ings, and I would obtain two identical sentences."
The repetition is sought and found only in this infini­
tesimal difference which paradoxically induces the identi­
cal; and just as the antisentence is introduced through the
opening created by a minute difference, it is only after an
almost imperceptible shift has taken place that its identi­
cal words can be set. Both the repetition and the differ­
ence are so intricately linked, and adjusted with such exac­
titude, that it's not possible to distinguish which came first,
or which is derived. This meticulous connection gives his
polished texts a sudden depth wherein the surface flatness
seems necessary. It's a purely formal depth beneath the
narrative which opens a play of identity and differentia­
tion that is repeated as if in mirrors. It goes continuously
from objects to words, losing track of itself, but always
returning as itself. There is the slightly different identity of
the inductor words, a difference masked by the identical
adjacent words, an identity which covers a difference of
meaning, a difference that the narrative tries to eliminate
in the continuum of its discourse. This continuity leads to
these inexact reproductions whose flaws enable the iden­
tical sentence to be introduced; an identical sentence but
slightly different. And the simplest, most conventional
everyday language, a rigorously flat language which has
the function of repeating with exactitude objects and the
past for everyone, on entering into the play of infinite
The Cushions of the Billiard Table
multiplication of reflections, is captured, without escape,
in the depth of a mirror. The way out goes deeper into an
empty labyrinthian space, empty because it loses itself
there. When the language rejoins itself, it is shown that
the same things are not the same, not here, but other and
elsewhere. And this game can always begin again.
The metagram, treated like a game, is thus drawn back
from and marginal to everything that's commonplace, set­
tled, and peacefully familiar in the language; it brings forth
on a mocking surface the game of continually changing
reptitions, and of changes that end up as the same thing, a
game where language finds the space it needs. The meta­
gram is both the truth and the mask, a duplicate, repeated
and placed on the surface. At the same time, it is the open­
ing through which it enters, experiences the doubling, and
separates the mask from the face that it is duplicating.

That's no doubt the reason why of all the works from

this period, Roussel was satisfied only with Chiquenaude.
It's necessary to give a summary of this strange narrative
without getting too lost in the inextricable play of double
images, repetitions, and impediments.
One evening a music-hall comedy is being performed,
but it's not opening night (it's the repetition of the repro­
duction) . The spectator who is going to narrate the play
has composed a poem which will be recited several times on
stage by one of the characters. But the famous actor who
has the part has fallen ill: an understudy will replace him.
Thus the play begins with "les vers de la doublure dans la piece
de Forban talon rouge' (the verses of the understudy in the
play of Red Claw the Pirate ) . This Mephisto twice removed
appears on stage and recites the poem referred to above: a
vainglorious ballad in which he boasts of being protected
from harm by a piece of magical scarlet clothing that no
sword can pierce. In love with a beautiful girl, one night
 D EATH A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H

he disguises himself-a new imitation-as her lover, a

highwayman and an inveterate duelist. The bandit's pro­
tective genie, his clever alter ego, discovers the devil's plan
in the reflections of a magic mirror which unmasks the
impersonator by repeating his image; he then takes the
magical garment and sews inside it a lining made from a
piece of motheaten material of the same color, a flawed
lining. When the bandit returns to challenge the devil to a
duel, confronting his double played by an understudy, he
has no trouble piercing the formerly invulnerable
material with his blade, now separated and severed from
its power by an imitation, to be exact, " les vers de la doublure
dans la piece du fort pantalon rouge' ( the moth holes in the
lining of the material of the strong red pants) .
In this text are all the elements which will figure in
the works of Roussel: narrated theater; lovers taken by
surprise; magical substances; people disguised beyond all
proportion as minuscule obj ects (the corps de ballet as
spools, needles, and thread) ; and also in a general way,
it articulates the impossible by amassing evidence with
the most meticulous attention to detail. But probably the
satisfaction Roussel felt about this text came from the
marvelous composition of echoes which reverberate
from his beginning, two almost identical sentences
which must be connected within the text and in all the
configurations that are to be found there: repetition,
doubles, their reappearance, impediments, impercept­
ible differences, divisions, and fatal wounds. It's as if
the form imposed on the text by the rules of the game
took on its own being in the world acted out and imitated
on stage; as if the structure imposed by language became
the spontaneous life of people and things. The movement
of repetitions and transformations, their constant im­
balance, and the loss of substance experienced by words
along the way are becoming, surreptitiously, marvelous
The Cushions of the Billiard Table <
mechanisms for creating beings; the ontological power of
this submerged language.
There is one fact: of all the texts from this period Chi­
quenaude is the only one in which the metagram coincides
with the dislocation of the eponymous sentence: Forhan
talon rouge, fort pantalon rouge. This is the formula of the
general process as it is applied in Impressions d 'Afrique and
Locus Solus. I would also be ready to bet that within the text
itself there is something like a model of the double mean­
ing of words which would subsequently become the essen­
tial element of his technique. Certain unusual junctures,
such as l'etoffefee (fairy-cloth ) , la reserve (the reserve ) , l'enfer
(hell) , and complet magique (magic suit) , ring strangely like
the repetition of invisible words which, loaded with
another meaning, will circulate beneath the text to order
its conjunctions and recognitions. Chiquenaude is the only
text in the works of Roussel where the process is used, in a
unique repetition, in both of its forms: the return of the
initial sentence and the tenuous coming together of words
which have no natural relationship except in another
frame of reference or in a slightly modified form.
Roussel, with surprising vehemence (he was replying to a
hypothesis by Vitrac ) , has denied any relationship between
Chiquenaude and La Doublure. He had a specific reason:
Chiquenaude is a text already invested completely with the
process; all of its nervous system has been drawn in by him,
well beyond the principle of repeated sentences. In spite
of everything there is a relationship between the disappoint­
ing experience of the mask as it is found in La Doublure
and the play of repetition where the tenets of his youth are
found, as well as lost. The mask that reproduces the face
by an apparent illusion and which, in its oversized card­
board distortion, with its flaws and peeling colors and black
eye-holes, shows itselfas a true and false double; the language
which scans it meticulously spells out its imperfections,
 DEATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

and slides into the space that separates it from the person
whom it imitates and who, in turn, is its double. Aren't
these already like a first formulation of the profound void
underlying objects and words, over which moves the
language of the process of doubling itself, experiencing
in this trajectory its own disappointing reproduction?
Chiquenaude is a magical gesture which, in one motion,
opens the seam and reveals about language an unsus­
pected dimension into which it will throw itself. As in all of
Roussel's work, this chasm holds between its symmetrical
parentheses a cycle of words and objects which are
self-generated, and completes its movement with self­
efficiency. As nothing outside can disturb the purity and
glory enclosed, it finds itself in a repetition which­
whether by essential fate or by sovereign will-means the
elimination of the self.
These genesis-texts, fecund texts, already promise the
end when they will be repeated, the end which is a willed
death and a return to the first threshold.
 3
Rhyme and Reason

I R E A L 1 z E T H A T my progress is halting: trying to explain

these first attempts in terms of what the form would
become in the future; by skipping over La Doublure, yet still
referring to it in spite of Roussel' s prohibition (I will keep
my analysis of it for the end, when the circle will have to be
completed) ; neglecting La Vue, Le Concert (The Concert) ,
and La Source (The Source) , which are contemporary with
the period under study (but to deal with them would
mean a detour) ; relying on his posthumous explanation as
my bible, but constantly supplying material which seems
to be everywhere at hand, until I am caught up in his
explanation of the texts. No doubt I ' m exhausting every­
one 's patience by annotating, all told, pages 4 and < of
How I Wrote Certain of My Books.
A strictly accurate linear development becomes neces­
sary now that we are at the threshold whose seriousness
Roussel did not attempt to hide: "At last, when I was about
thirty, I felt as though I had finally found my way. " It's the
32 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

period Uust after the cyclical tales Nanon and Une Page du
Folklore Breton) when he wrote Impressions d 'Afrique in a style
derived from his previous technique. It's the same slightly
monotonous voice as in the early narratives, the same
exact words, stretched and flat. Yet it seems to me that it's
no longer the same language speaking, that the Impressions
d 'Afrique was born on another verbal continent. The fra­
gile and persistent vessels we already know have taken to
this second land those words that prowl around the con­
fines of Roussel's work: "The white letters on the cushions
of the old billiard table."
Could it be said that these clear signs written on a dark
ground along the length of a familiar game table are the
visual representation of the experiment with language
Roussel conducted throughout the whole of his work?
Could it be a sort of negative code at the boundaries of the
realm where language exerts its playful and calculable
potential? This would give that phrase the privileged role
of conveying the treasure of which, by its meaning, it is the
rather clearly drawn outline. The negative copy is one of
Roussel's familiar themes: it can be found in the white
drawings and the black wax of the sculptorJerjeck; or even
in the negative, as in the example of woven material seen
right side out by the " metier a aubes" (work at dawn/paddle­
wheel loom) . These white signs say what they have to say,
and yet refute it by their very clarity.
"As for the genesis of Impressions d 'Afrique, it occurs in the
association of the word billard (billiard table) with the word
pillard ( plunderer) . The plunderer is Talou; the bandes are
his warrior hordes; the white man is Carmichael ( the word
'letters' was dropped) . Then, amplifying the process, I
sought new words related to the word billard, always with
the intention of using them in a sense other than the obvi­
ous one, and each time something new was created. Thus
queue (billiard cue/train) provided Talou's robes with a
Rhyme and Reason <
train." Sometimes a billiard cue has an initial on it, the
initial of its owner: whence the initial (number) on the
aforementioned train; the same technique for bandes
( hordes) and blanc (white) . "Once outside the realm of
billard, I continued to use the same method. I selected a
word and linked it to another with the preposition a (to) ;
and these two words, understood in some other way than
their original meaning, provided me with a new cre­
ation . . . . I must say that at first this was difficult work."
That isn' t hard to believe. Nor is it easy-even though
strictly speaking there may be no common standard-to
provide a detailed analysis of this method. It's not that
Roussel' s explanation is obscure or inadequate; for each
of his words, it is absolutely efficient. Nor is it a question of
there being something hidden; perhaps Roussel doesn't
tell all, but neither is he hiding anything. The difficulty in
this text, as in all the others, stems in some way from
Roussel himself, in his extreme meticulousness and his
severe brevity: a certain way of making language go
through the most complicated course and simultaneously
take the most direct path in such a way that the following
paradox leaps out as evident: the most direct line is also
the most perfect circle, which, in coming to a close, sud­
denly becomes straight, linear, and as economical as light.
This effect is not on the order of style, but belongs to the
relationship language bears to the ground it must cover. It
is the formal organizing principle of the seventeen gen­
esis-texts, in which the whole trajectory of the narrative
and of time traces the entire instantaneous straight line
that goes from a sentence to its marvelously identical,
diametrical opposite.
The verbal wealth from which Impressions d 'Afrique is
drawn is therefore this: "Les lettres du blanc sur les bandes du
vieux billard." In order not to have to say it again (yet with
Roussel it's always necessary to repeat) , it must be noted
34 D EATH AND THE LAB YRINTH
that the word letters (letters) is not used. I t will reappear
many times in the narrative in all its meanings, as one of
the images or resources most often selected (for example,
in the Rul, Massen, and Djizme episodes) . But it does not
dictate the construction of the language, perhaps because
that is what it designates, perhaps because the entire
scenic structure is prescribed internally by the words both
hidden and revealed there, just as the letters are visible
signs-black on white, white on black-wherein dwell
words that live and sleep beneath these strange signs. The
whole of the Impressions d 'Afrique is no more than letters
(signs and cryptograms) written in the negative (in
white ) , then brought back to the black words of a legible
and common language. The word "letter" is not part of
the game because it is being held in reserve to designate
the novel in its entirety. I can't refrain from decoding this
word as it applies to the title. This is an example of a
negative form which, when applied to a surface and seen
at a glance, leaves its own reversed image-the positive­
in the same way that materials are "imprinted." It is this
meaning that I believe can be read in the word impressions,
which appears on the facade of the edifice. Obviously this
is only a hypothesis, not that this reading of it is subjective;
it is there in the autonomous meaning of the word. Per­
haps Roussel did not foresee it. He knew, however, that
language can never be disposed of absolutely. He plays
with the subject that speaks, with his repetitions and his
divisions. But let's go on to something more definite.
The eponymous sentence displays, in its two versions, a
play of metagrams: billard/pillard. The first word is dropped
and the second used, but not directly as itself. (I don't think
that the word pillard [plunderer] is used once in the 455
pages of the text to designate Talou, a good man, after all,
though jealous, ill-tempered, and given to disguises.) It will
only be used through a haze of associations: cutoff heads,
Rhyme and Reason 35
tawdry fineries, spoils, the old hereditary conflicts of former
cannibal dynasties, punitive expeditions, hoarded treasures,
sacked cities. From this fact can be derived a first principle:
whereas the two homonymic sentences are what is most
evident in the early works-exalted at the beginning and
at the end of the narrative like the cryptographic bands on
the cushions of the billiard table-they are now thrust
back within the text, which, instead of being limited by
them, functions as a thick envelope. In truth, they are not
buried at the same depth: the antiword (pillard, plunderer)
is visibly indicated even if it does not appear. It appears as a
watermark beneath all the real words, readily visible against
the light. "What had been the final sentence thus rightfully
remains on the verge of visibility and enunciation. In turn,
the eponymous sentence falls outside the realm of any pos­
sible visibility ( there is not the least appearance of a billiard
table or a piece of chalk) . However, it remains in fact the
exacting organizer, since without it there would not have
been any bellicose warriors, nor European captives, nor
black troops, nor the white man Carmichael, etc. It seems
that the horizontal axis of the genesis-texts has been swung
around and now shows itself vertically, as if standing on its
head: what had been seen of language and of time at the
end of the narrative, as if through binoculars, had started
from the initial sentence by the necessity of returning to it.
It is this and this alone that is found in the Impressions
d 'Afrique. It's as if one were reading, linked together, all the
final sentences of the early texts placed end-to-end in such
a way that they overlay all the first sentences and the narra­
tive distance that separated them. This causes a remark­
able effect of liquid depth: by bringing the narrative back
to the simple phrase that sums it up-"the hordes of the
old plunderer"-it is possible to discern, as if at the bottom
of a pool, the white pebble of that similar though imper­
ceptible sentence; but it is only a surface undulation, a
 D EA T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
legible echo, and from within its silence, since it is never
uttered, it sets free the whole brilliant and vibrant surface
of words. So near, and so nearly identical, the nucleus
sentence remains, however, at an infinite distance, at the
other end of language where it is dormant and vigilant at
the same time, watching over all the enunciated words,
and asleep on its unsuspected reserve. It marks the limits
of the gap that is opened up within the identity of lan­
guage; it signifies the elimination of this distance. It is the
mirroring effect of the unbridgeable space that has been
suppressed, the space covered by the early texts between
their identical boundaries.
This technique of a secret verticality could lead to no
possible discourse if it weren't balanced by another, cap­
able of opening a horizontal diffusion. Each word of the
eponymous sentence is associated with a kindred realm:
from billiard to billiard cue, which often bears as an inlay­
a monogram of silver or mother-of-pearl-the initials of
the purchaser, who during the game reserves for himself
the exclusive use of it; which leads us to the word chif.fre
(initial/number) . Each of these words will be treated as
seminal words, used in an identical form but with a radic­
ally different meaning. The piece of chalk suggests the
paper wrapping at its base to protect the fingers from the
white dust; this paper is glued to the chalk, hence the word
colle (glue/punishment) , taken in the sense used by gram­
mar school students: additional work inflicted as punish­
ment. Only this second meaning appears in the text; the
first, which is only a double, remains as buried as the
billiard table at the beginning. The lateral extension, by
way of association, is only made at the first level (billiard
table, chalk, stick, paper, glue) and never at the level of
homonyms, where the chieftain of the hordes or the punish­
ment appears. Only the eponymous level is rich, continu­
ous, fecund, susceptible to being fertilized; it weaves by
Rhyme and Reason <
itself the great spiderweb which stretches beneath the narra­
tive. But if this deeper level has a natural coherence which is
guaranteed by association, the second realm is composed of
elements foreign to one another, since they have been
retained only for their formal identity in relation to their
doubles. These words are homonymous to the initial words,
but heterogenous among themselves. They are discrete
segments, without semantic communication, with no rela­
tionship other than a complicated zigzag that attaches them
individually to the original core: detention (level 2) refers to
the glue (Ievel l ) on the white chalk <1) which produces the
white man Carmichael (2) ; from this we descend further
into white ( 1 ) which recalls the markings on the cushions
( 1 ) ; these cushions produce the hordes (2), where we
plunge again toward the edges of the billiard table <1 )-this
billiard which gives birth to the savage plunderer (2) , etc.
It' s a star-shaped structure which immediately indicates the
task of the narrative: to discover a curve that will touch all
the exterior points of the star, all the pointed verbal
extremes which have been projected to the periphery by
the dark explosion, now silenced and cold, of the first
language.
Now the game consists of retracing the distance produced
by the dispersion of a sentence reduced to its homonyms,
independent of any coherent meaning. It's a matter of cov­
ering this distance as quickly as possible and with the least
number of words, by tracing the only line that is adequate
and necessary. Then, turning around its own motionless
center, black and shining, this solar wheel will give language
its regular motion and carry it to the light of a visible text­
visible but not transparent, since nothing that upholds it
will be decipherable any longer. And in the guise of a lan­
guage that develops in freedom through whimsical material,
ordered by a wandering, indolent, sinuous imagination,
an enslaved language is doled out by the millimeter,
 D EATH AND THE LABYRINTH
cautious about the direction it takes, yet forced to cross an
enormous distance because it is linked from inside to the
simple, silent sentence which remains mute within it.
Between two points of the star a triangle is formed whose
base is designated by the equivocal preposition a. The task
is to project language from one point to another in a tra­
jectory which will duplicate the natural affinity-masking
it as it responds to its impulse-which links a piece of white
chalk to ( a) the glue of the paper wrapping it, a billiard cue
to the initial of its owner, a bolt of old material to the darn­
ing which repairs the tear (a relationship which makes it
possible to speak of bande a reprises [ recovery band/pick
up the darning strip] , queue a chiffre [a monogrammed
cue/initialed train] . . . ) . The preposition a seems to have
two functions; or rather, the narrative is working toward
bringing the a in the trajectory as close as possible to the
possessive a little by the thread of language, starting from
blanc (white) , reaches la colle (the glue) , and blanc by the
same token becomes " a colU' (what distinguishes it from
other characters is the additional element) . With two words
separated by a void, the machinery of language succeeds
in creating a profound, substantial unity, more anchored,
more solid, than any similarity of form. From the hollow
opening inside words are fashioned beings endowed with
strange characteristics, which seem to have been part of
them since the beginning of time and forever inscribed in
their destiny, yet are nothing more than the wake of the
motion of words. In the early texts the repetition of lan­
guage occurred in a rarefied state (reproduction, and
inside this reproduction the statement of a void) ; now the
language experiences the distance of repetition only as a
place for the mute apparatus of a fantastical ontology. The
scattering of words allows an improbable joining of beings.
These nonbeings circulating inside the language are
strange things, a dynasty of the improbable: crachat a delta
Rhyme and Reason 39
(delta of spittle) , bolero a remise (cut-rate vest) , dragon a elan
(springing dragon) , martingale a Tripoli (martingale of
Tripoli) .
The gaps between the words are a never ending source
of wealth. Leave the first domain of "billiard" and let other
groups of words enter this magnetic field haphazardly;
and as they appear, the mechanism of the process will
treat them the same way: it will insert its blade into their
girth and bring forth two strange meanings while main­
taining the unity of form. These new eponymous couples
sometimes have a sanctioned form ( maison a espag;nolettes
[ house with window bolts] , cercle a rayons [sunburst] , vestes
a brandebourgs (jacket fastened with frogs] , roue a caoutchouc
[rubber wheel] , tulle a pois [spotted tulle] quinte a resolu­
'
tion [a musical fifth in resolution] ) ; but often they meet on
pretty tenuous grounds. If Bedu the engineer has installed
a loom on the river Tez that is driven like a water mill, it is
the result of a previous association: ". . . metier [work/
loom] a aubes [dawns/paddle wheel] . I thought of a pro­
fession which required getting up at the crack of dawn. "
If Nair gives Djizme a gift of a braid decorated with
"small pictures of the most varied subjects," rather like
pendants on a lamp, it is because of the association of natte
(a braid a woman makes of her hair) and a cul (to the pos­
terior)-"! thought of a very long braid." Or else if one is
lucky enough to think of a double figure such as the words
crachat (spittle/grand decoration such as a star or cross)
and delta (Greek letter< river delta) , what comes to mind
first? A decoration with a triangular shape similar to that
of the Greek letter written in capital? Or a man sending a
mighty, abundant stream of saliva so effluvia! that it
spreads like the Rhone or the Mekong into a delta? This is
what Roussel thinks of first.
But I'm not following the rules. My opinion as to the
appropriateness of these "rencontres a tresor' (meetings of
 D EATH AND THE LABYRINTH
gems) has no relevance. What we are seeking is pure form.
What matters is the sovereign role of chance in the inter­
stices of language, the way it is avoided exactly where it
holds sway, celebrated instead of obscurely defeated.
It seems that chance triumphs on the surface of the nar­
rative in those forms which rise naturally out of the depths
of the impossible; in the singing mites, the truncated man
who is a one-man band, the rooster that writes his name by
spitting blood, Fogar's jellyfish, the gluttonous parasols.
But these monstrosities without family or species are
necessary associations; they obey mathematically the laws
governing homonyms and the most exacting principles of
order; they are inevitable. And if this is not recognized, it is
only because they are part of the illusory, external surface
of a dark imperative. But into the entrance of the laby­
rinth, an entrance unseen because it is located paradoxic­
ally at the center, true chance rushes ceaselessly. Words
from anywhere, words with neither home nor hearth,
shreds of sentences, the old collages of the ready-made
language, recent couplings-an entire language whose
only meaning is to submit to being raffled off and ordered
according to its own fate is blindly given over to the gran­
diose decoration of the process. At the start no instrument
or stratagem can predict their outcome. Then the marvel­
ous mechanism takes over and transforms them, doubles
their improbability by the game of homonyms, traces a
"natural" link between them, and delivers them at last with
meticulous care. The reader thinks he recognizes the way­
ward wanderings of the imagination where in fact there is
only random language, methodically treated.
What I see there is not automatic writing as such but the
most conscious writing of all: it has mastered all the imper­
ceptible and fragmentary play of chance. It has sealed
all the interstices of language where it could insidiously
creep in. It has eliminated gaps and detours and exorcised
Rhyme and Reason
the nonbeing which is activated when one speaks. It has
organized a space that is full, solid, massive; where noth­
ing can threaten the words as long as they remain obedient
to their principle. It sets up a verbal world whose elements
stand tightly packed together against the unforeseen: it
has turned to stone a language which refuses sleep, dreams,
surprise, events in general, and can hurl a fundamental
challenge toward time. But this is accomplished by totally
removing all that is random at the origin of everything
that has speech, on that silent axis where the possibilities
of language take shape. Chance does not speak essentially
through words nor can it be seen in their convolution. It is
the eruption of language, its sudden appearance: it's the
reserve from which the words flow, this absolute distance
of language from itself, which makes it speak. It's not a
night atwinkle with stars, an illuminated sleep, nor a
drowsy vigil. It is the very edge of consciousness. It shows
that at the moment of speaking the words are already
there, while before speaking there was nothing. Short of
awakening, there is no consciousness. But at daybreak the
night lies before us, shattered into obstinate fragments
through which we must make our way.
The only serious element of chance in language does not
occur in its internal encounters, but in those at the source.
These occurrences, both within language and external to
it, form its first limitation. This is demonstrated not by the
fact that language is what it is, but that there is language at
all. The process consists of purifying discourse of all the
false coincidences of "inspiration," of fantasy, of the pen
running on by itself, in order to confront the unbearable
evidence that language comes to us from the depth of a
perfectly clear night and is impossible to master. The ele­
ment of chance in literary style, its biases and reversals, is
suppressed in order to bring out the straight line of a provi­
dential emergence of language. One of the reasons why
 D EATH AND THE LABYRINTH
Roussel's works are created against the mainstream of lit­
erature is the attempt to organize, according to the least
random discourse, the most inevitable chance occurrences.
The attempt is very often successful. The most dazzling
must be cited since it has become, by being often quoted,
Roussel's only classical passage. Here is the problem: " 1 st
baleine (whale ) a ilote ( to small island) ; 2nd baleine (whale­
bone stays in a corset) a ilote ( to Helot, a Spartan slave) ; 1st
duel (duel/ combat between two people) a accolade (to two
adversaries reconciled after a duel and embracing each
other on the field) ; 2nd duel (dual/ tense of the Greek verb)
a accolade (to typographical brackets) ; 1 st mou (weak indi­
vidual) a raille ( I thought of a timid student railed by his
fellows for his inadequacy) ; 2nd mou (calves' lights/lungs)
a rail ( to railway line) ." And here is the solution: "The
statue was black and seemed at first glance to be carved from
one solid block; but little by little the eye could detect a
great number of grooves cut in all directions and in gen­
eral forming numerous parallel groupings. In reality the
work was composed solely of innumerable whalebone cor­
set stays, cut and bent to the needs of the modeling. Flat­
headed nails, whose points no doubt must have been bent
inward, joined together these supple staves which were
juxtaposed with art, without leaving room for the slightest
gap. . . . The feet of the statue rested on a very simple
vehicle, whose platform base and four wheels were also made
of black whalebone stays ingeniously fitted together. Two
narrow rows of a raw, reddish, gelatinous substance which
was in fact calves' lights were aligned on a dark wood sur­
face, and by their shape, if not color, created the exact illu­
sion of a section of railroad track; the four immobile wheels
rested on these without disturbing them. A floor, adapted
for carriage wheels, formed the top of a completely black
pedestal whose front displayed a white inscription which
read: 'The death of the Helot Saribskis. ' Beneath, also in
Rhyme and Reason <
snow-white letters, could be seen this inscription, half
French, half Greek, with a fine bracket: 'DUEL. ' " So easy
and so difficult is it, without any other throw of the dice
than language, to abolish such a fundamental chance.

Ilote ( Helot) is superimposed on ilot (small island) .

Simple phonetic displacement can build a whole medieval
castle with crenellations and turrets from piles of coins
( tours en billon, towers of copper coins) ; the construction
will begin with tourbillon (whirlwind) . "I decided to take a
sentence at random from which I drew images by distort­
ing it, as though I were taking them from the drawings of a
rebus." For example: the folk song 'J'ai du bon tabac dans ma
tabatiere" (I've got good tobacco in my tobacco pouch)
gives 'Jade, tube, onde, aubade en mat a basse tierce' (Jade, tube,
water, mat object, to third bass) . And Sapeur Camembert,
instead of "invraisemblable' (unbelievable) , used to say " un
nain vert sans barbe'' (a green dwarf without a beard) .
"The process developed," Roussel said about this new
technique, as if it acted without direction from him, like
one of those simultaneously unforeseen, automatic, and
spontaneously inventive movements made in front of La
Billaudiere, with him and without him, by his metal
fighter: "Suddenly, the mechanical arm, rapidly executing
several skillful feints, lunged in a straight thrust at Balbet
who, despite his universally acknowledged prowess, wasn't
able to parry this marvelous, faultless pass." This is a new
aspect of the process: it' s a blade thrust deep inside which
strikes, against all expectation, the loyal adversary; that is
to say, the reader, the language, or even Roussel himself,
who is positioned in one location or another, behind the
mechanism, to start it up, and in front of it to make the
futile effort to parry its unassailable thrusts, its unexpected
and deadly blade which by remarkable happenstance finds
the opening, touches its goal, and majestically pierces it.
44 DEATH A N D T H E LAB Y R I N T H
The originality of this seemingly natural "evolution" is
extreme. The disintegration is greater than the one meas­
ured before, whose violence dislocated from their obvious
meanings " le blanc a retenue' (the white man in detention)
and " la quinte a resolution" (the musical fifth in resolution) .
I t was then a case of separating the two sides of the same
verbal surface. Now the physical entity of the word must
yield up from its material substance elements of identity,
like so many minuscule sequins which will be immediately
plunged into another verbal body infinitely larger since it
has to cover the volume of the secret explosion of words.
Like a rocket from the fireworks shipped to Argentina by
the cunning Luxo for the mad wedding of a millionaire
baron, "j'ai du bon tabac" releases, in fragmenting itself,
a completely magical oriental night: "The diaphanous
image evoked an oriental landscape. Beneath the clear sky
stretched a magnificent garden filled with seductive
flowers. In the middle of a marble basin a j et of water in
the outline of a gracious curve sprang from ajade tube . . . .
Beneath the window near the marble basin stood a young
man with curly hair. . . . He lifted the face of an inspired
poet toward the couple and he sang a few elegies in his
own fashion, using a megaphone of mat silver metal." jade
(jade) tube ( tube) , onde (water) , aubade en mat (mat object) .
The field of chance is no longer proportionate to any­
thing known. Formerly the number of possible variations
were those of the listings for the same word in a dictionary
or in common usage. Thus it was always possible by this
authority to discover the two words that are the inductor
couple. The secret with which Roussel has burdened them
is only a fact that can be suggested (for example, the inci­
dent of the sergeant maj or's sentencing the handsome
Zouave, his rival, to a few days in jail no doubt occurred
through the gap in a "jalousie a crans" (venetian blinds) .
But now the eponymous sentence is irretrievably lost. In
Rhyme and Reason 45
order to discover it too many diverging paths have to be re­
traced, too many crossroads encountered: it has been pul­
verized. Over there lie words that are absolutely lost, words
whose dust mixed with that of other words dances as par­
ticles in the sun. You may only know that it's a few verses of
Victor Hugo ("Eut rer;u pour hochet la couronne de Rome" [ Had
received for a teething ring the Crown of Rome] explodes
into Ursule, brocket, lac Huronne, drome [ Ursula, pike, Lake
Huron, (hippo) drome] ) ; the address of Roussel's shoe­
maker ( Hellstern, 5 Place Vendome, which evaporates to
helice, tourne, zinc, plat, se rend, dome [propeller, turn, zinc,
flat, goes (becomes) , dome ] ) ; the caption of a drawing by
Caran d'Ache, the title of a novella by Barbey d'Aurevilly,
fiery letters that shine from within the palace of Nebuchad­
nezzar (hence the incident ofFogar turning on the spotlight
with a handle in his armpit) . Roussel himself lost most of
the other keys, and except by luck this first language cannot
be recovered-its phonetic fragments sparkling, without
our knowing where, displayed on the enchanted surface.
The forms of dispersion authorized by a sentence such as
"j'ai du bon tabac" (I've got good tobacco) are infinitely
numerous; each syllable offers a new possibility: geai (jack­
daw), tue (kill) , pean (paean) , ta bacchante (your bacchante) ;
or even: Jette, Ubu, honte a bas (Ubu, cast down shame) ; or
still: ]'aide une bonne abaque (I help a good abacus) . . . . It's
easy to see that all these solutions are wanting in richness
compared to Roussel's privileged creations; to go from
familiar moonlight to the nights of Baghdad, a certain
amount of calculated chance is required, and no doubt a
certain direction mapped out under so many possible stars.
The enormity of the risks that are encountered and over­
come is reminiscent of the machine in the second chapter
of Locus Salus: an aerial instrument for setting down tiny
paving stones creates a mosaic of human teeth obtained
by painless and expedient extraction; a complex mechanism
 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
enables it to fly from the piles of polychromatic incisors to
the design, and, selecting the one needed, place it in the
appropriate spot. The inventor has discovered the way to
calculate in advance to the smallest detail the strength and
direction of each breath of air. As with the multicolored
syllables extracted by Roussel from the human mouth, a
marvelous mechanism disposes of them by relying on the
most hazardous and unpredictable movements. Every­
thing about Canterel's machine is known except how he
calculated the winds. Roussel's process is equally well
known. But why this particular direction? How was the
choice made? What current or what breath takes the
severed syllable back to the language which rejoins it?
Roussel said, not without wisdom: 'just as one can use
rhymes to compose good or bad verse, so one can use this
method to produce good or bad works. "
Here 's the original element o f chance thrown back
inside the work, not as a haphazard disc overy but as count­
less possible ways of destroying and reconstructing words
such as they occur. Chance is not a play of positive elem­
ents, it's an infinite opening, renewed at the very moment
of annihilation. In this multiplication of the haphazard
which is maintained and turned into ceaseless destruc­
tion, the birth and death of language is a continuum, giv­
ing birth to these motionless, repetitive, half-dead and
half-alive figures, both objects and humans, that appear
on Ejur's stage or in Martial Canterel's invention of a box
for resurrection.
Brought back to self-destruction which is also risky birth,
Roussel' s haphazard language has a strange shape: like all
literary language it's the annihilation of daily repetitions
and it upholds itself indefinitely in the hieratic gesture of
this murder; like daily language, it repeats incessantly, but
the purpose of this repetition is not to gather and pass on;
it maintains what it repeats in the drowning out of a
Rhyme and Reason <
silence that necessarily throws an inaudible echo. Right
from the start of the game Roussel's language takes in
what has already been said, which it embraces with the
most haphazard element of chance, not to express in a
better way what's already been said but to have the form
undergo the second random fragmentation, and, from
the scattered pieces, inert and shapeless, create the most
incredible meanings by leaving them in place. Far from
being a language that seeks to begin, it's the second form
of words already spoken: it's everyday language ravaged by
destruction and death. That's why it is essential that it
refuse to be original. It does not attempt creation, but by
going beyond destruction, it seeks the same language it
has just massacred, finding it again identical and whole.
By nature it is repetitive. Speaking for the first time of
things never seen, machines never invented, monstrous
plants, cripples Goya would never have dreamed of, cru­
cified j ellyfish, adolescents with seagreen blood, this lan­
guage carefully hides that it says only what has already
been spoken. However, he did reveal it at the last moment
in his posthumous declaration; thus his voluntary death
opened an internal dimension of language which was,
after all, his own sentencing of that language to death and
also its resurrection from the splendid particles that con­
stitute its body. It's this sudden void created by death in
everyday language, followed immediately by the appear­
ance of stars, which marks the boundaries of poetry.
"It is essentially a poetic method," said Roussel. But
formerly, with that placating reticence which determined
the rhythm of all his behavior, he had both justified and
diminished the scope of his declaration by explaining that
"the process is, in short, related to rhyme. In both cases
there is unforeseen creation due to phonetic combin­
ations." If "rhyme" is given its most encompassing mean­
ing, if it's understood to include all forms of repetition in
 D EA T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
language, then it's well within its scope that all of Roussel's
work takes shape: from the playful rhymes which frame, in
the manner of a refrain, the early texts, to the paired words
of the first process which create the paradoxical echoes of
words never uttered, to the syllable-sequins of the second
process which point out to no one in particular the min­
ute flashes of a silent explosion where this language, which
is always speaking, dies. In this final form which determines
the four m<.Yor t�xts of Roussel's work (Impressions d 'Afrique,
Locus Solus, L 'Etoile au Front, La Poussiere de Soleils) , the
rhyme (modified into a faint and often only approximate
resonance) just carries a trace of the repetition that was
once louder, more charged with meaning and possibilities,
more weighted with poetry. The language repeats itself
beyond the enormous, meticulous mechanism that anni­
hilates it, only to find itself formed again with the same
materials, the same phonemes, and equivalent words and
sentences. From the original prose of a language hap­
hazardly discovered to the duplicate prose not yet articu­
lated, there's a profound repetition. It is not the lateral
one of things said again, but the radical one which has gone
beyond nonbeing and, because it has come through this
void, is poetry, even if on the level of style it remains the
flattest of prose. Flat, Roussel's poetical Mrica ("Despite
the setting sun the heat remained overwhelming in this
part of Mrica near the equator, and each of us felt immo­
bilized and ill by the stifling heat stirred by not a breeze") ;
flat, Canterel's enchanted retreat ("He is far enough from
the bustle of Paris-and yet could reach the capital in a
quarter of an hour when his research required a visit to such
and such special library, or when the time came to present
the scientific world, at extremely crowded lectures, with
such sensational information") . But this flat language, this
thin repetition of the most worn-out usages, is stretched flat
on the enormous machinery of death and of resurrection,
Rhyme and Reason 49
which simultaneously divides and rejoins it. I t is poetic in
its roots, as well as in its process of creation by this gigantic
machinery which marks the points of indifference
between the creation and the destruction, the dawn and
the death.
 4
Dawns, Mine, Crystal

T H E T H I R D P E R F O R M E R at the gala of lncomparables,

Bob Boucharessas, four years old, bears on his forehead
the star of imitation: "With an astonishing mastery and a
miraculously precocious talent, the charming tot began a
routine of imitations executed with eloquent gestures: the
various sounds of a train starting up, all the calls of barn­
yard animals, the grating of a saw on ashlar stone, the
sudden popping of the cork of a bottle of champagne, the
glug-glug of liquid being poured, the fanfare of a hunting
horn, a violin solo, the plaintive melody of a cello-these
formed a dazzling repertory able to create for anyone who
would momentarily close his eyes the total illusion of
reality."
The forms of imitation (of a duplication of things, of a
return to the identical through action at the very moment
of being copied) determine practically all the skills of the
Incomparables (who are incomparable because of the ever­
flattering comparison of their exploits with reality, result-
52 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
ing in a reproduction of it that is unique in its perfection)
and all the scenes set in the Solitary Place (unique appar­
ently because of all the doubles flourishing along the wind­
ing of its paths) . These marvels of duplication can take many
forms: men-or living beings-who, separating from their
own being, identify with other things to assume their visible
reality and to take on their appearance (Bob Boucharessas
or, in Canterel's liquid diamond, the ballerina who became
an aquatic harp ) ; things-or animals-who, slipping away
from their own domain and in obedience to some secret
law, assume human action most alien to any rules-or
perhaps conforming strictly to the most complex of laws
(Marius Boucharessas' cats who are athletes; Mopsus, the
rooster who writes by spitting blood; the invincible metal
swashbuckler) ; figures who imitate reproductions, taking
away from them what they imitate in order to reconstitute
the original in some indefinable way. It is on a higher level
since it is about a redoubled splitting, but elementary
because this double imitation harks back to a primary reality
(the flying pile driver translates into human teeth an old
legend passed on for a long time by word of mouth; the
sea horses harnessed to their solidified sauternes bubble
depict the old allegory of the rising sun ) . There are scenes
which imitate theatrical illusion, based on them in order
to extend them to the limits of the unreal (a fake scene
duplicates Romeo's last act with images fashioned from
billows of multicolored smoke) or to reduce them to the
simple truth of the actor who is their double agent (the
obese ballerina reduced to the reality of an old spinning
top when the whiplash knocks her over; or what consti­
tutes the reverse image, such as the actor Lauze, restored
to a semblance of life by the artifices of Canterel-but
only for that one scene where he reached the height of
perfection as an actor) . Finally, there is the last or fifth
form, the indefinite imitation which reproduces itself, ere-
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 53
ating a monotonous line that triumphs over time (it is
Canterel's double discovery of "resurrectine" and of "vital­
ium" which makes it possible to animate death with an
endless repetition of life; it is also Fogar's tree: the mol­
ecules that compose its delicate fronds, brilliant and vibra­
tory, are sensitive to such a degree that their organization
and color reproduce exactly the space they occupy; they
can thus register the images of a book-itself a record of
often recounted legends-and reproduce them endlessly,
even projecting them on the ground, so sharp is the pic­
ture, so fresh the colors, of this reflection of a
reflection . . . ) .
Everything in these unique skills is secondhand, every­
thing about these incomparable accomplishments is
repetitious. The reason is that everything has always
already begun; the incredible has already been heard and,
beyond memory, the words have spoken from the depths
of language. The wonder is that every renewed beginning
starts from the unique, and reproduces it exactly, but
duplicated and irreducible. The mechanism and the
scenes already contain their final results, just as the words
are hidden in the process whose function was to bring
them to the surface.
These astonishing mechanisms for repetition in reality
hide more than they reveal of what they have to reproduce.
What is the meaning, in the first garden path of Locus Salus,
of the black clay figure of a child, arms open in an enig­
matic gesture of offering, and on whose base is indicated in
a peremptory way that the subject is "Federal a semen-contra"
(Federal wormwood) ? And what is the meaning of the
sculptured relief nearby depicting a "one-eyed man in pink
clothing who . . . pointed out for several onlookers a
medium-sized block of green-veined marble with an ingot
ofgold half buried in its upper surface and on it the word Ego
and the sign for paragraph and date shallowly engraved"?
54 D EATH A N D T H E LA B YR I N T H
What treasure is silendy pointed out here and there, only to
be withdrawn the moment it is proffered? All these scenes
are like spectacles, since they display what they show but do
not disclose what is in them. They have a radiance in which
nothing is visible, as in the diamond of mirroring liquid
that Canterel has erected at the bottom of his terrace with a
solar brilliance that attracts one's attention but dazzles too
much for one to be able to see: "Two meters high and three
wide, beneath the rays of the blazing sun the monstrous
jewel, rounded in the shape of an ellipse, threw fiery beams
that were almost unbearable, surrounding it with lightning
flashing in all directions."
Mter the synchronic exhibition of these marvels, Rous­
sel then proposes the secret story represented by their
interplay. This requires a "second navigation" around the
objects, scenes, and machines, which are no longer treated
as marvelous games in space, but become narratives
crushed into a unique, fixed figure (with little temporal
bearing) and indefinitely repeatable. The language of this
second part of the text has the function of restoring mean­
ing to signs, sequence to the simultaneous; and to reitera­
tion it returns the unique event that it repeats. This second
navigation is a voyage around a continent taken as a whole
(in Impressions d 'Afrique) or a coasting around each of the
figures (in Locus Solus) . Within this exposition, in these
scenes of time regained, each element is repeated in its
place with its meaning. For example, we learn that the one­
eyed dwarf of the sculptured relief is a courtjester, to whom
the dying king confided a secret going far back to the remote
history of the dynasty, which founded its power on a sym­
bolic bar of pure gold. The narrative returns to the original
moment when it started, recovers the image which stood at
the beginning like a mute emblem, and now tells what it
means. The combination of figure and narrative functions
in the same way as formerly did the genesis-texts: the
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 55
machines or the staging occupy the position of the iso­
morphic sentence whose strange images create a void
toward which the language rushes, which even through an
immense expanse of time leads back to it with meticulous
care to form the narrative time of these mute forms. This
time and this language repeat the eponymous figure since
they explain it, return it to its first occurrence, and restore
its actual stature. But it could just as well be said (and this
is not the case with the genesis-texts) that the mechanism
repeats the contents of the narrative, which it projects
forward beyond time and beyond language, according to
a system of translation which triumphs over duration as it
does over words. The system is thus reversible: the narra­
tive repeats the mechanism that creates the narrative.
As for the shift in meaning (essential and obvious in the
isomorphic sentences) , it is now hidden inside the mech­
anisms whose structure is secretly dictated by a series of
eponymous words, repeated according to the laws of the
process. Roussel's machines are thus bifurcated and doubly
wonderful: they repeat in one language, which is spoken
and coherent, another which is mute, spent, and destroyed;
they also repeat in fixed images without words the long
sentence of a story: an orthogonal system of repetitions.
They are situated exactly at the point where language is
articulated, a point both dead and alive; they are the lan­
guage which is born of suppressed language (consequently
poetry) ; they are the figures which take form in language
before discourse and before words ( also poetry) . Before
and after that which is articulated, they are the language
rhyming with itself: repeating from the past whatever still
lives in the word (killing it by the simultaneously formed
figure) , repeating everything that is silent, dead, and secret
in what is spoken (and making it live as a visible image) . A
rhyme becomes an echo at the ambiguous moment when
language is at the same time the victim and the murderer,
 D E AT H A N D T H E LA B YR I N T H
the resurrection and suppression of itself. There, lan­
guage experiences a death that clings to life, and its very
life is prolonged in death. At this point it is the repetition,
the reflection in which death and life mirror each other,
and each places the other in doubt. Roussel invented lan­
guage machines that have no other secret outside of the
process than the visible and profound relationship that all
language maintains with, disengages itself from, takes up,
and repeats indefinitely with death.
This is confirmed in an easily understood way by the
main character of Locus Solus; in it Canterel explains a
procedure in which one can' t fail to recognize, not the
process, but rather its relationship to the whole of Rous­
sel's language: the process of the process. "Having experi­
mented for a long time on cadavers placed under timely
refrigeration and at the required temperature, the master,
after much trial and error, finally made a discovery that
used one part vitaliurn to one part resurrectine-a re ddish
matter in an erythritol base which, injected as a liquid
through a laterally pierced opening into the skull of some
deceased subj ect, solidified around the entire surface of
the brain. The internal envelope thus created needed only
to be brought into contact with the vitalium, a dark metal
easily inserted as a short rod into the orifice of the inj ec­
tion, to cause these two elements, which are separately
inert, to instantaneously discharge a powerful surge of
electricity penetrating the brain and triumphing over the
cadaver's rigor mortis to endow the subject with an aston­
ishing factitious life . " I will come back later to the restora­
tive powers of these products. For now, I will only say this:
Canterel's formula calls for two products, where one with­
out the other remains inactive. The first, the color of blood,
remains inside the corpse, covering the crumbly pulp of
the brain with a hard shell. Rigid, it has the stiffness of a
dead thing, but it preserves and maintains it in this death
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 57
which it duplicates for eventual repetitions; it is not the
rediscovery of life but death enveloped as death. As for the
other, it comes from the outside and brings to the secret
shell the vivacity of the moment: with it movement starts
and the past returns; death is thawed back to time and
time is repeated in death. Inserted between the skin and
body like an invisible wax, or a solid void, the resurrectine
functions in the same way repetitions, rhymes, assonance,
and metagrams do between the surface language and the
eponymous words: it's the invisible depth of Roussel's lan­
guage which communicates vertically with its own sus­
tained destruction.
The horizontal rod of vitalium, which introduces time,
has the same function as the narrative language of the
second level: it's the linear discourse of events which
repeats itself, the slow speech curved to return. It seems as
if Roussel before his death, in his last explanatory work
where this form clearly is used, had always intended to revive
it due to all these figures of the living dead, or more specif­
ically, due to all these bodies floating in a neutral ether
where time echoes around death as language does around
its own destruction.
In their basic function Roussel's machines make all
speech undergo a moment of annihilation, in order to
rejoin the language divided from itself-and yet identical
to itself-in so perfect an imitation that between that imi­
tation and its model only the thin black blade of death has
been able to penetrate. This is the essence of imitation
( theatrical not just in its staging, but in its being) of all the
"attractions" displayed on Ejur Square, or in the solitary
garden. Litde Bob Boucharessas' virtuosity is dominated by
the same mortal division as the scenes played in Canterel's
cold rooms; in one as in the other, life is repeated beyond
its limits. The child imitated things that were dead; the
dead doctored by Canterel imitate their own life: he
 D EATH AND T H E LAB Y R I N T H
reproduced "with a strict verisimilitude the slightest
motions made during certain telling moments of life . . . .
And the illusion of life was absolute: eye movements, the
continual action of the lungs, speech, various gestures, the
walk, nothing was lacking. "
Thus the effects of duality never cease to multiply: the
twice-repeated eponymous words (the first time in
the scene with the machine or the display of skills, and the
second time in the explanation of it or its historical com­
mentary) , the machines repeated in the second discourse
according to the sequence of time. This narrative is itself
repeated by the machine which, by making it immediate,
reduplicates the past (often in an indefinite series) and
divides the present by its exact imitation. It is a system
which proliferates with rhymes, in which not only syllables
are repeated but also words, the entire language, things,
memory, the past, legends, life-each separated from and
connected to itself by the fissure of death. What Roussel
said must be heeded: "The process is in short related to
rhyme. In both cases there is unforeseen creation due to
phonetic combinations. It is essentially a poetic process."
Poetry is the absolute division of language which restores
it identically to itself, but on the other side of death; it is
the rhymes of things and of time. From the faithful echo is
born the pure invention of verse.
This is what is demonst.rated on the plains of Ejur by
Stephane Alcott and his six sons. Six sons, all thin as skel­
etons, take up positions at specified distances from one
another in a virtual architecture of sound; by constricting
chest and stomach each forms the cavity of a parenthesis:
"The father, cupping his hands to form a megaphone in
the direction of the eldest, shouted his own name in a deep,
resounding tone. Immediately, at irregular intervals, the
four syllables, Stephane Alcott, were successively repeated
at six points of the enormous zigzag, without the partici-
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 59
pants having moved their lips in any way." Then going
from speech to song, Stephane sent forth loud baritone
notes which, resonating to his satisfaction at different
points of the alignment, were followed by vocalizations,
trills, fragments of melodies, and happy popular tunes
sung in bits and pieces. (One seems to hear these frag­
ments of ready-made speech that Roussel's process under­
takes to echo in the density of his language. ) By the
marvelous power of repetition hidden in the words, the
bodies of men are transformed into cathedrals of sound.
No doubt the most piercing echo is also the one that is
the least audible, the most obvious imitation, the one that
easily escapes attention.
All of Roussel's devices-the machines, the theatrical
figures, the historical reconstructions, the acrobatics, the
prestidigitation, the performing animals, and the arti­
fice-are, in a way that is more or less clear, not only a
repetition of hidden syllables, or just the elements of a
story to be discovered, but also an image of the process
itself. It is an image that is imperceptibly visible, perceived
but not decipherable, revealed in a flash and without a
possible reading, present in a radiance that blinds the
reader. It is clear that Roussel's machines are identifiable with
the process, and yet this clarity reveals nothing about itself; it
can only offer to the reader the silence of the blank page.
In order for the signs of the process to manifest them­
selves in this void, the posthumous text was needed, which
does not provide an explanation for the visible forms, but
brings to light what already was shown in them, crossing
the field of perception with impunity and blinding the
reader. The text published after his death (which at times
gives the impression of being the result of disappointed
expectation, and seems almost resentful that the reader
should not have seen what was there) was necessarily pre­
ordained by the creation of his machines and those fan-
6o D EATH A N D THE LABYRINTH

tastical scenes, since they could not be read without him

and Roussel never wanted to hide anything. Hence the
initial sentence of his revelation: "I always intended to
.63+15< how I wrote C<:t�tain of my buokr;. "
In Impressions d 'Afrique, in Locus Solus, i n all the texts
using the process, beneath the secret technique of lan­
guage there is another secret hidden, which, like it, is both
visible and invisible. It's the part essential to the whole
mechanism of the process, the weight that fatally moves
the cogs and dials-Roussel's death. In all these figures
singing of infinite repetitions, Roussel's unique and
definitive act in Palermo is inscribed as a future that was
always present. All these secret rhythms echoing one
another in the corridors of the work can be perceived as
the metronomic progression of an event whose promise
and necessity is continually repeated. In that way, all of
Roussel's works (not only the last text) contain a figure
that combines the "secret" and the "post-humous": every
line of it is separated from its truth-yet manifest': since it is
not hidden-by this bond with his future death which refers
in turn to the posthumous revelation of an already visible,
already exposed secret; as if vision, in order to see what
there is to see, needed the reflecting presence of death.
To reveal the process, which is not perceptible in its
invisibility but which radiates through all the figures of
Impressions d 'Afrique and Locus Solus, is an immense task
that should be undertaken someday-but piece by piece,
when Roussel's works and their context are better under­
stood. By way of an example we have here just one
machine (Bedu's loom) and, in the general ceremony, the
first characters at the gala of Incomparables.
I would be surprised if anything in these festivities was
left to chance (except, of course, the introducing into the
system of inductor words) . Of the nine chapters forming
the part "to be explained" from Impressions d 'Afrique, let us
Dawns, Mine, Crystal
leave aside the first two and the last, which narrate the
sentencing of the condemned and Montalescot's trial.
From the third to the eighth chapters the peerless victims
of the shipwreck each perform in turn the skills for their
deliverance. Why does the zitherist worm appear in the
same series with young Lady Fortune? Why the echo-men
with the fireworks? Why does pathetic Adinolfa follow in
the same procession the man who plays folk songs on his
amputated tibia? Why this order and not another? The
grouping of figures in series (indicated by the chapters)
definitely has its meaning.
I believe that the first grouping ( Chap. III) is identifi­
able as thefigures of chance mastered. Mastered in the form of
a duality (Fig. 1 , two symmetrical jugglers [one is left­
handed] form mirror images on either side of a curtain
of balls that they throw back and forth to each other) .
Mastered according to the rules of a game (Fig. 2, a litter
of kittens divided into two teams learns to play prisoner's
base) . Mastered by the duplication of imitation (Fig. 3, the
child who presents a duplicate of the most unusual assort­
ment of objects) . But there is at the same time the inex­
haustible wealth of chance (Fig. 4, the young girl disguised
as the Goddess Fortune) ; yet as Roussel stated about the
process: "Still, one needs to know how to use it." Thus
Figure 5, the marksman who by firing his gun (Gras) sep­
arates the white from the yolk of an egg. However, chance
is only vanquished by a discursive knowledge, a mechan­
ism able to anticipate risk, outsmart and defeat it (Fig. 6, the
metal swashbuckler who can anticipate the quickest feints
and strike the final blow) . This makes it possible, then, to
attain with certainty a glory that is nonetheless dangerous
(Fig. 7, the child carried off by an eagle as the result of
his own cunning and the precious animal he sacrificed) .
This glory of chance vanquished is illustrated by three
instruments: the first uses differences in temperature (Cf.
 DEATH AND T H E LAB Y RI N T H
Canterel, the flying pile driver, the rule of the winds) to
compose music; the second uses magnetized pencils to
prospect for precious stones and metals; and the third
uses the sudden leaps of a worm trained to execute melod­
ies on a water clock (Figs. 8, 9, 10) . This is also the first
stage of the process: to accept instead of to suppress the
chance element of language so that it is framed in its
rhymes, to anticipate and build it, discover its treasures
and its slightest flaws, and little by little to perfect the
song. The undulations of the worm which by diving into a
body of water frees this or that little droplet, which in
falling sounds a recognizable note-is this not exactly the
obscure selection of words in the flow of language, isol­
ated, projected outside their original sound and pulsating
with others, which becomes a magical instrument? From
the duplicated figures of the jugglers, reflected as in a
mirror and linked by the rapid trajectory of balls, to the
worm from whom, one by one, the syllable-droplets of a
polyphonic language fall away, the very direction of the
process can be discovered exactly as it is defined in How I
Wrote Certain of My Books-from "the white letters" to the
breaking up of Hugo's verses into future pearls (his
repulsive assimilation of earthworms to Hugo's rhyming
lines was made by Roussel in his posthumous text, and we
are familiar with Roussel's identification with Hugo which
is the basis of his poem Mon A me) .
It seems to me that Chapter IV (second grouping) is the
song ofduplicated language (Carmichael as Talou's prompter,
Fig. 1 1 ) , of language repeating the story ( the lecture in
front of the portraits, Fig. 12) or things (demonstration of
natural sciences, Fig. 1 3) . This duplicated language has the
strange power of splitting the speaking subject, making him
maintain several discourses at once (Fig. 1 4, the torso-man
and the orchestra; Fig. 15, Ludovic, the singer with many
mouths) . Thus it can be activated automatically-above
Dawns, Mine, Crystal
and below the scope of reflection (Fig. 1 6, the speaking
severed head; Fig. 1 7, the tibia flute) ; causing to speak
what is incapable of speech (Fig. 1 8, the talkative horse; Fig.
19, the dominoes, cards, and coins whose simple spatial
distribution, according to a chance arrangement, make an
image the way eponymous words form a narrative) ; endow­
ing human speech with a breadth and a power hitherto un­
known (Fig. 20, the fantastic megaphone) ; and a capacity
for a theatrical illusion where the imitation is identical to
the life being imitated (Adinolfa, the great actress, weeps
right into the wings "her limpid flowing tears," Fig. 2 1 ) .
Should one see in the third grouping (Chap. V) the
theater (Fig. 22) and its failure (the spinning-top ballerina
and the whiplash, Fig. 23; Carmichael's lapses of memory,
Fig. 24) ? Is it the failure of these duplicates who are not in
any sense understudies? I am not certain.
In any case, the song which follows celebrates the tri­
umph of the process: the victory of rhyme, the creation of
music ( the polyphonic echo of the Alcott brothers, Fig.
25) ; the victory of the minuscule syllables developed by
the process into a magical narrative ( these are Fuxier's
lozenges which, when dropped into water, expand into
colored images, Fig. 28) ; the victory of words which, like
fireworks sent up above the shadow of the process,
illuminate the dark sky in a blossoming both symmetrical
to and the inverse of the previous figure (Luxo's fire­
works, Fig. 27) . In the midst of these machines of success,
the blind Sirdah is cured: the scales fall from her eyes and
she can see (Fig. 26) .
Now I would like to pause at the image which directly
follows this illumination, not because it is the secret
revealed, but because of all the machines in Impressions
d 'Afrique and also, I believe, in Locus Solus, it is the one that
shows the most dazzling isomorphism with the process.
The engineer Bedu has constructed on the shores of the
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
river Tez a loom ( metier a aubes) . (It silently suggests-as we
know from the posthumous text-a labor that requires get­
ting up early in the morning-Roussel's passion for hard
work.) In the night its metal rods sparkle, illuminated by
the circular eye of a beacon: against the darkness emerge
"all the intricacies of the astonishing machine toward
which all eyes converge," with Sirdah's restored eyes in the
forefront. The ten pages of details would seem to be an
exception to his law of brevity; ten pages on the workings
of a machine which is, after all, banal, taken from the
articles 'jacquard," "Loom," and "Weaving" of the seven­
volume illustrated Larousse dictionary. These ten pages
are without any surprises, except for two or three impos­
sible mechanical details (these difficulties are resolved with­
out any problem inside a mysterious box) , which is the clue
that the process has been introduced into the traditional
machinery of weaving. Isn' t this an intrusion in the usual
structure of his writing? It is the river's current that generates
the movements of the loom (as the flux of language with its
coincidences, its elements of chance, ready-made phrases,
and its confluences, indefinitely feeds the mechanism of
the process) . The paddles plunge into the water, sometimes
in depth, sometimes skimming the surface, and their move­
ments release, through a complicated system of threads
which escape notice, the action of innumerable spindles
whose spools wind rainbow-colored silk threads. The cur­
rent of water causes the movement above it of other multi­
colored threads, distinct and nimble, whose interweaving
will create the fabric. The play of threads is also a word play,
in which appears through self-reference the shift in mean­
ing which serves as the lead thread that will draw the ready­
made sentences from the flow of language to the tightly
woven and patterned work. Another innovation of the
machine is that Roussel-Bedu has ascribed to the spon­
taneous motion of the shuttle box (finally working "by it-
Dawns, Mine, Crystal
self' for the first time since Aristotle) the functions that
Jacquard assigned to the arches, rods, and cartons: because
the shuttles function as inductor words. Following a hid­
den "programming," the designated shuttle is ejected from
its socket, reaches the awaiting compartment, and returns
to its point of departure, leaving behind a transverse thread.
Thus in the process, preordained words spontaneously leap
out of their original sentences, cross the breadth of lan­
guage, and reach the other side-from whence they return
in the other direction, their colored wake behind them
wound in its turn around the axis of the narrative. It must
be noted that the selection of shuttles is determined by the
paddles, but the movements of the paddles are dictated by
the requirements of the pattern of the design and the
future trajectories of the shuttles: it is the mysterious
envelopment of time, a complex meshing of the automatic
with the willed, of chance with the finite, the blending of
the found with the sought after, whose union occurs inside
this oblong, forever-closed black box, yet whose purpose is
"to activate the whole," and which is suspended between
stream and fabric, between paddle and shuttle, between
current and thread. It is the brain of a machine for weaving,
strangely resembling a coffin. Is it death which is there,
serving as a relay midway between the stream and the
design, between time and the work? It cannot be known. In
this machine everything is set up to be seen (the woven
image itself appears right side out, just as the narrative
resulting from the process does not show its reverse side) ,
except for this black box which will remain forever closed.
The material displayed to the spectators depicts the story
of the Flood ( the reverse image of the machine: the force
of water not controlled, the flux that overwhelms the world,
driving to the mountaintops the "wretched condemned,"
perhaps as the extraordinary dangers of language threaten
those who do not master them) . The loom is the opposite
66 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
of this twilight destiny; it defines what it is by drawing the
Ark-the vessel of reconciliation, the sovereignty of the
process, the place where every being in the world can with
its own kind find its parentage: "Rising calm and maj estic
on top of the waves appeared the regular and massive shape
of Noah's Ark, adorned with tiny figures wandering in the
midst of a large menagerie." The machine (a mute repro­
duction of the process) reproduces an image whose loaded
symbol itself points out its resemblance to the process; what
it shows the spectator in a mute but distinct image is what
it essentially is: an ark on the waters. The circle is com­
plete, as the great cycle of paddle wheels, dawns, morn­
ings, and words is complete, each of which in turn plunges
into the current of language and from it silently draws forth
the spell of the narratives. "Their number, their graduated
sizes, the way they plunged into the water, separately or
together, briefly or for a longer period, provided an end­
less variety of combinations, favoring the realization of the
boldest conceptions. One might have mistaken it for some
silent musical instrument, striking chords or playing
arpeggios, some simple, others extremely intricate, whose
rhythm and harmony were constantly recurring. . . . The
whole apparatus, remarkable both in its assembly and its
lubrication, ran with a silent perfection which gave the
impression of a true mechanical marvel." What then is this
strange sound, so perfect as not to be heard, this muted
harmony, these superimposed notes which no hearing
could perceive? No doubt it is this sound that, at the depth
of Roussel's language, causes the reverberation of what one
does not succeed in hearing. No doubt it is something like
the imperceptible visibility of the process whose rigorous
mechanism forms the interstices of all those wonderful
and impossible machines.
Fabricated from language, the machines are this act of
fabrication; they originate within themselves; between their
Dawns, Mine, Crystal
tubes, their arms, their cogwheels, their metal construc­
tions, they enclose the process in which they are con­
tained. They thus give the process a presence without per­
spective. It is assigned a place outside of space since it
serves as its own location; its dwelling place is its surround­
ings, hidden by its own visibility. It was only natural that
these contorted shapes and numerous mechanisms doing
nothing gave rise to the idea of an enigma, a cypher, a
secret. Surrounding this machinery and inside it, there is a
persistent night through which one senses that it is hid­
den. But this night is a kind of sun without rays or space;
its radiance is cut down to fit these shapes, constituting
their very being, and not their opening to visibility: a self­
sufficient and enclosed sun.
In order for all this machinery to become intelligible, it
was not a code that was needed, but a stepping back which
opened the field of vision, removed these mute figures to
a horizon, and presented them in space. It was not neces­
sary to have something additional in order to understand
them, but something subtracted, an opening through
which their presence would swing back and forth and
reappear on the other side. They had to be presented in a
replica identical to themselves, yet one from which they
were separate. The rupture of death was needed. There is
only one key and that is the threshold.
These divided and identical machines reappear in the
posthumous text. By a strange reversibility the analysis of
the process has the same outline as the machines them­
selves. How I Wrote Certain of My Books is structured as an
explanation of the forms in Impressions d 'Afrique or Locus
Solus: first, the mechanism whose principles and evolution
are described as though suspended between heaven and
earth-as a series of movements which function inde­
pendently, pulling the author into a logic of which he is the
occasion more than the subject ("The process evolved and
68 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
I was led to take any sentence . . . " ) . Then once again the
process is explained within a successive, anecdotal time
beginning with Roussel's birth and concluding with a
return to the process in relation to which the author's life
appears as having been determined by it and forming its
context. Finally, Roussel confides to it the repetition of his
own existence for posthumous glory-just as he returns to
the machines for an indefinite duplication of the past in
a flawless reproduction beyond time. "In concluding this
work, I return to the painful reaction I felt in seeing my
works come up against a hostile, almost complete lack of
understanding . . . and for lack of anything better, I seek
refuge in the hope that perhaps I will receive some post­
humous attention where my books are concerned."
Thus Roussel's last book is the last of his machines-the
machine which, containing and repeating within its
mechanism all those he had formerly described and put in
motion, makes evident the mechanism that invented them.
But there is one objection: if the machines only reveal their
marvelous ability to repeat by covering over the imper­
ceptible words and sentences, is there not also in the post­
humous text a hidden language which speaks of something
other than what is said, pushing the revelation even further
away? I believe the answer is yes and no. If How I Wrote
Certain of My Books makes the process visible, it is in fact
because it abuts right up against something else, in the same
way that the mechanism of the loom could only operate
before the spectators' eyes to the extent that it was sustained
and contained by the rectangular black box. This "some­
thing else," this subsurface language, is visible and invis­
ible in the "secret and posthumous" text. The secret is that
it must be posthumous and that death within it plays the
role of inductor words. That is the reason why after this
machine, there can be no other. The language hidden in
the revelation only reveals that beyond it there is no more
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 6g
language and what speaks quietly within it is already
silence: death is the leveller in this last language which,
opening at last the essential coffin of the loom, discovers
within it only its demise.
The last display of skill in Impressions d 'Afrique is that of
Louise Montalescot. Whereas the others perform for their
freedom, she alone risks death. Her only chance of sur­
vival is in her accomplishing a prodigious imitation of life.
She chooses to give an exact duplication of the most com­
plex, the most delicate of landscapes: dawn in the forest,
which is also, after all, a metier a aubes (work at dawn) . "On
the ground large flowers, blue, yellow or scarlet, sparkled
among the moss. In the distance through the tree trunks
and branches the resplendent sky; at the bottom, a first
horizontal strip of blood red faded to give way to a band of
orange above, which turned light to bring forth a very
bright golden yellow; next came a pale blue, a bare tint,
and from its midst toward the right shone one last linger­
ing star." Between the bloodred strip which reddened the
horizon marking the earth's limit and the clear sky with its
solitary star is the symbolic distance in which Louise
Montalescot must accomplish her masterpiece. Naturally
she succeeds, as she does in reproducing the whole group
of people that came to observe her (Roussel also loved
to imitate people around him) : "The warmest congratula­
tions were lavished on Louise, who was moved and
radiant"; and when it is announced that she is saved,
she learns of "the complete satisfaction of the Emperor,
wonderstruck at the perfect manner in which the young
woman had fulfilled all the conditions he had strictly
imposed." But in the kingdom where Roussel alone lived,
there was no emperor, no amazement, nor any mercy
shown. And the perfect machine will repeat itself in
death.
There is hardly any doubt that Roussel is a close relative
 DEATH A N D T H E L A B Y RI N TH
of all the inventors, acrobats, actors, and illusionists who
make up Talou's little prison colony, and a near relative
above all of the universal Martial who rules over the garden
in Locus Solus. He is the ever-watchful engineer of the repe­
tition-machines. But he is also the machines themselves.
This leads to a rereading of Mon < me ( My Soul) , the
poem Roussel wrote at the age of seventeen (in 1 894) and
published soon after La Doublure under the altered title
"L 'li me de Victor Hugo" (The Soul of Victor Hugo) : "My
soul is a strange root where fire and water struggle . . . . "
It is interesting to compare this precocious machine to
a later one where there is a similar unity composed of
fire and water. In Canterel's garden, at the end of a high
terrace, a gigantic glass bowl makes the wonderful mix­
ture it contains sparkle like a diamond: water in which
each particle, due to an inherent luminosity, glitters like
mica in the sun. It is an innate fusion of fluidity and bril­
liance, of the secretive and of the illuminating, since from
afar it is only perceived in flashes that catch the eye but
also avert it, while up close the glance can penetrate it
without difficulty as though it were endowed with trans­
parency. In this crystal furnace a microcosm of Roussel's
inventions can be discovered: human instrumentality, as
in Faustine's musical hair; the tamed animal nature of
the racing sea horses; the mechanical resurrection of
death with Danton's talkative head; scenes that blossom
like Japanese flowers; the element of endless survival in
the aqua micans; and finally the image with which all
this apparatus symbolizes itself: the golden bubble of
Sauternes solidified into a sun.
The forge of the soul is a strange underground cavern
that remains open to the sky. Along with a whole group of
admirers Roussel leans over the edge of this gigantic well,
thus looking beneath himself and, at his feet, the open
and burning hollow of his own head-his brains:
Dawns, Mine, Crystal
Sur la profondeur de l'abime
Mon corps se penche de nouveau
Uche par la jlamme sublime
Qui s 'eleve de mon cerveau.

Over the depth of the abyss

My body leans again
Licked by the sublime flame
Arising from my brain.

From this head thus severed (as will be the heads of

Gaizduh or Danton) , from this brain open to the sky (as
will be Canterel's diamond) which nevertheless remains at
his feet, Roussel sees a whole language arise, liquid and
incandescent, forged by untiring workers on the high
ground where the mouth of the mine opens. There the
metal cools, is given shape by skillful hands; metal
becomes verse; and the ferment starts to rhyme.

Avec les rejlets sur leurface

Du foyer, jaune, rouge et vert
28<8*08088-49< a la 8;7
*/ ,-<
Les vers deja formes un peu.

Peniblement chacun souleve

Le sien avec sa pince defer
Et sur le bard du puits l'acheve
En tapant dans un bruit d'enfer.

With the reflections on their faces

Of the furnace, yellow, red, and green
They take from the surface
The verses already somewhat formed.

Painfully each one lifts

His own with metal tongs
And on the edge of the well finishes it
By hammering in a hellish noise.
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
Paradoxically inspiration comes from below. In this cur­
rent from the underneath of things, which liquefies solid
ground, a language is revealed which comes before lan­
guage: raised up to the level of work-to the workers who
come and go like the shuttles between the threads of the
chain-it is ready to solidify into a hard and memorable
metal, the gold thread of a sanctified fabric. In the depths
sleep the images to be born; calm, worldless landscapes:
Un beau soir qui s 'apaise
Sur un lac aux reflets grenat
Un jeune couple sous l 'ombrage
Rougit au coucher du solei!.
A beautiful evening descends
On a lake with garnet-red reflections
In the shadows a young couple
Blush in the setting sun.

Thus Faustine, the aquatic dancer, dreams at the bottom

of the diamond: "A graceful and delicate young woman
dressed in a flesh-colored swim suit stood on the bottom
and, completely immersed, assumed many poses full of
aesthetic charm, all the while gently shaking her head."
The forge of the soul needs fuel: coal, solid black fire,
conveyed by boats from the most distant lands. From this
comes a confusion of masts, wagons, sails, forges, chim­
neys, and sirens, of green waters and red and white metal.
And the soul-furnace, voracious mouth and open belly,
absorbs everything that is poured into it. Canterel, the
sovereign engineer of the soul-crystal, has with calculated
care deposited within this fresh, sparkling reservoir the
Cartesian divers, the furless cat, Danton's peeled brain,
the Sauternes solar bubble, the upright harnessed teams
of sea horses, and, not without difficulty, the frightened
Faustine, not as nutrients to be ground down, but as
flowers that will blossom.
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 73
The differences are obvious. The diamond in Locus Solus
is completely aerial, as if suspended in midair; its luster is
perfect-promising survival, but nevertheless disquieting:
has not the coldness of death slipped into it, that coldness
one will soon find again in the refrigerated morgue? At
ground level, the first soul is stifling: coal, red metal, the
thick smelting is cast in a menacing but abundant furnace;
everything is weighty in these raw materials. Everything is
weightless and clear in the crystal; the marvelous water (air
and drink, the absolute nourishment) is a sort of trans­
parent carbon, resolved, already without substances: pure
flame, light gas, a diamond fluid as water. It is the motion­
less and inexhaustible driving force of a life which indeed
does not have to be complete. What is thrown into it floats,
or dances, or effortlessly follows the graceful alternation of
rising and falling. Whoever drinks of it becomes slightly
drunk. It is at the same time pure expansion and complete
reserve. It tells of the enchantment of a place where cer­
tain figures come to flourish without effort or clamor, who
enact silent movements, tirelessly repeated, in which the
soul can find the repose of time.
The forge, on the contrary, was deafening: hammers,
metal being struck, poking: "The noise of cannon which
deafens." Canterel's crystal would be perfect silence if it
was not enhanced, as though in excess, by a barely audible
music which one could believe to be that of its interior
glow. "Little by little, as one approached, one perceived
faint music, wonderful in effect, consisting of a strange
series of characteristic rising and descending arpeggios of
the scale," as if the water itself was sonorous.
One has the impression that on emerging from the
ground where it was originally buried, the heavy machinery
of the mine, without changing the order of its parts in any
way nor the direction of its mechanism, has now become
earnest, light, transparent, and musical. The values have
74 D EATH A N D THE LA B YRINTH
been reversed: coal has become shimmering water; the
embers, crystal; the melting, freshness; the dark, light;
noise, harmony. The confused work of the anthill has
abated; henceforth all movements revolve without friction
around an unseen axis-the great internal silent law.
Haste and bustle have forever been lulled to sleep in the
ceremony of repetitions. Earth has become ether. It is
perhaps this change, or something of this order, that
Roussel points to by his sentence: "At last, around thirty, I
felt that I had found my path by those combinations of
words I mentioned."
And then all these lovely aerial machines-there is the
crystal, the paddles, the flying pile driver, the aerial drop
of water, the eagle and the child, the palm frond with a
memory, the fireworks, the luminous grapes, the smoke
sculpture, the metallic prism, the balls of the twin jugglers,
and so many others-which will land on solid ground
according to their own cycle. There they will not find the
fiery disorder of the mine, but a well-tended and frozen
garden, like the one in which Canterel preserves his dead:
this is the garden surveyed for a last time in How I Wrote
Certain of My Books. And there, just as they are about to
disappear, they will discover the possibility of a new ascen­
sion where they will become even more serious­
machines of pure glory (since no one is more of a non­
believer than Roussel) , which will complete cycles that
henceforth can no longer be counted. Roussel evokes this
eternally repetitive machine, this forge which beyond
death becomes winged crystal in the stanza he added after
the death of Victor Hugo, this other self, to the poem
L 'Autre Guitare (The Other Guitar) :
Comment, disaient-ils·
Nous sentant des ailes
Quitter nos corps vils ?
-Mourez, disaient-elles.
Dawns, Mine, Crystal 75
How, they asked,
Feeling our wings
Shall we quit our vile bodies?
-Die, they said.

They-they are the light, imperious machines, and in

the center of all of them, the sovereign process which
binds together within its blinding crystal, in its endless
weaving, and in the depth of the mine, both fire and
water, language and death.
 5
The Metamorphosis
and the Labyrinth

R o u s s E L ' s M A C H I N E S do not manufacture beings; they

maintain things in their state of being. Their function is to
make things remain as they are: safeguard the images, up­
hold the heritage and royalty, maintain the glories with their
sunbursts, hide the treasures, record the confessions, sup­
press the declarations; in short, keep under glass (the way
Franc;;ois:Jules Cordier's skulls are kept under glass domes
or the butterfly belonging to the prefect's wife in L 'Etoile au
Front) . But also-to insure this preservation beyond its
limits-to make things happen, overcome obstacles, pass
through reigns, throw open the prisons and divulge secrets,
to reappear on the other side of the night, defeating
memory in sleep, as was done by Jouel's famous gold
ingot, whose memory crossed so many gates, silences, con­
spiracies, generations, numbers, becoming a message in
the rattling head of a buffoon or the squeak of a pillow
doll. All these machines open, within the protective en­
closure, a space which is also that of marvelous communica-
 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
tion. A passage which is an enclosure. Threshold and key.
The refrigerated rooms of Locus Salus carry out this func­
tion with the greatest economy of means: to make life pass
through death by the sole (and very simple, it should be
noted) virtue ofvitalium coupled with the no less effective
resurrectine, by throwing down the divider that separates
them. This is in order to maintain a semblance of life that
has the privilege of remaining unchanged for an
unlimited number of performances. Protected by the
glass which enables them to be seen, sheltered by this
transparent and frozen parenthesis, life and death can
communicate in order to remain one within the other, one
in spite of the other, what they are indefinitely.
This past which still remains, riddled by so many com­
munications, is no doubt the breath of all legends, which
is magically opened and closed by the same unique phrase,
the often-repeated "once upon a time." Roussel's narratives,
produced by such a complicated machinery of language,
appear with the simplicity of children's tales. In this world,
placed out of reach by the verbal ritual that begins it, beings
have a magical power to form allegiances between one
another, to bind one another, to exchange whispers, to cross
the distances and the metamorphoses, to become others
and to remain the same. "Once upon a time" reveals the
present and inaccessible heart of things, which will not
pass away because it remains in the distance, and in the
nearby dwelling of the past. The moment it is solemnly
announced from the beginning that the story is there, the
days and the things of "once upon a time," their unique
celebration, and the half-uttered promise that they will be
repeated every time-each time, the flight of language
crosses the boundary, reappearing on that other side which
is always the same. By this very function of maintaining
beings, Roussel's machines create tales of their own accord:
a form of the fantastic continuously kept within bounds by
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth <
the boxwood edging of the fable. Equivocably Roussel's
tales can be read in two directions (Roussel advised un­
initiated readers of Impressions d 'Afrique to read the second
part before the first) , because it is the machines which
produce the tales, and it is also the tales which remain
within the machines. Leiris defined it wonderfully: "The
products of Roussel's imagination are the commonplace
made quintessential: as disconcerting and singular as he is
for the public, in fact he drew from the same sources as
popular imagination and children's imagination. No
doubt the almost unanimous incomprehension which
Roussel painfully encountered is due less to an inability to
attain the universal than to this unusual alliance of the
everyday commonplace and the quintessential." The pro­
cess produces ready-mades, and immemorial narratives
cause the birth of machines never before seen. This closed
discourse, hermetically sealed by its repetitions, opens
from within onto the oldest issues of language and makes
an architecture without a past suddenly rise. That's perhaps
where his relationship to Jules Verne becomes apparent.
Roussel himself has stated how he admired him: "From
certain pages of Voyage to the Center of the Earth, to Five Weeks
in a Balloon, to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,
to From the Earth to the Moon, to Circling the Moon, to The
Mysterious Island, to Hector Servadac, he rises to the highest
attainment of human language. I had the happiness of
visiting him once at Amiens, where I was stationed for my
military service, and was able to shake the hand that wrote
so many immortal works. 0 supreme Master, blessed are
you for the sublime hours I have spent my whole life in read­
ing and rereading you continuously." And to Michel Leiris'
father he wrote in 1 92 1 : "Ask me to give up my life, but don' t
ask me to lend you Jules Verne. I am such a fanatic about his
works that I am jealous of them. If you reread them, I beg of
you never even to utter his name before me, for it seems to
8o D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
me that it's a sacrilege to pronounce his name other than
while kneeling. He is by far the greatest literary genius of all
time; his work will 'remain' when all the authors of our
period will have been forgotten for a long time." In truth,
few works can travel less, are more immobile than those of
Raymond Roussel: nothing in them moves except for these
internal motions predetermined by the enclosed space of
the machines; nothing is out of place; everything sings of
the perfection of a peace that vibrates within itself and
whose every figure shifts position only to better indicate its
place and immediately return to it. Nor is there in Roussel
any sense of anticipation: invention opens no future; it is
completely introverted, having no other role than to pro­
tect against the erosion of time a figure that it alone has the
power to maintain in a technical eternity, barren and cold.
The tubes, the threads, the magnetic propagations, the
rays, the chemical effluvium, the nickel porticoes have not
been positioned to determine a future but only to slide in
the narrow space that separates the present from the past
and thus to maintain the figures of time. That's why there's
no question of ever using these instruments: the shipwreck
of the Incomparables, all their attractions saved, their
demonstration of them during a celebration are symbolic
of the essentially gratuitous nature which is further under­
lined by the solitude of Canterel's garden. All these
unknown instruments have no future other than their
rehearsal of the performance and their return to being the
same.
It is this being haunted by the return that's common to
both jules Verne and Raymond Roussel ( the same attempt
to eliminate time by the circular nature of space) . They
rediscovered in these unimaginable figures which they
never stopped inventing the old myths of departure, of
loss, and of return, those correlatives of the same which
becomes other and of the otherwhich was fundamentally the
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth
same, of the straight line to infinity which is identical to the
circle.
The instruments, stage settings, performances, and skills
exercise two great mythical functions for Roussel: those of
joining and discovery. To join beings across the greatest
distances of the cosmos ( the earthworm and the musician,
the rooster and the writer, the heart of a loaf of bread and
marble, tarot cards and phosphorous) ; to join incompat­
ible elements ( the water line and the thread of material,
chance and the rules, infirmity and virtuosity, puffs of
smoke and the mass of a sculpture) ; to join beyond any
conceivable dimension ranges of sizes without relation
(scenes carved in grape seeds; musical mechanisms hid­
den in the thickness of tarot cards) . But also to rediscover
a vanished past (a lost final act of Romeo andjuliet) , a treas­
ure (that of Hello) , the secret of a birth (Sirdah) , the author
of a crime ( Rul or the soldier struck by a bolt from the red
sun of Tsar Alexis) , a lost formula (Vascody's metallic lace) ,
a fortune (Roland de Mandebourg) , or a reason (by a return
of the past in the sudden cure of Seil-Kor or in the progres­
sive one of Lucius Egroizard) . Most of the time to j oi n and
to rediscover are the two mythic aspects of one and the same
figure. Canterel's corpses treated with resurrectine join life
and death by recreating the past exactly. Inside the great
brilliant crystal where Roussel's dreams float, there are the
figures which join (the tresses-harp, the cat-fish, the har­
nessed sea horses) and those which are discoveries (Dan­
ton's still-talkative head, the figures of divers going up and
down preserving fragments of history or legend, the har­
ness which recreates the chariot of the rising sun) ; and then
between the one and the other a violent short circuit: a cat­
fish electrifies Danton 's brain to make him repeat his old
speech. In these games imitation has a privileged place. It's
the most efficient means by whichjoining is identified with
discovery. Whatever imitates in fact crosses the world, the
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y RI N T H
substance of beings, the hierarchy of species to arrive at
the place of the original and rediscover in itself the truth
of this other being. Louise Montalescot's machine with
the tangle of its electric wires joins the great living forest
to the genius of the painter by the automatic movement of
the wheel; and in doing this she rediscovers the very thing
in front of which she is standing. It's as if she had joined so
many differences between them only to rediscover the
identity of the duplicate.
Thus are constructed and crisscrossed the mechanical
figures of the two great mythic spaces so often explored by
Western imagination: space that is rigid and forbidden,
surrounding the quest, the return, and the treasure ( that's
the geography of the Argonauts and of the labyrinth) ; and
the other space-communicating, polymorphous, contin­
uous, and irreversible-of the metamorphosis, that is to
say, of the visible transformation of instantly crossed dis­
tances, of strange affinities, of symbolic replacements ( the
place of the human beast) . But it must be remembered
that it's the Minotaur who watches within Daedalus'
palace, and after the long corridors, he is the last chal­
lenge; on the return journey, the palace which imprisons
him, protects him, was built for him, manifests externally
his mixed m onstrous nature . On Ejur Square: as in
Canterel's garden, Roussel has erected minuscule laby­
rinths watched over by circus Minotaurs, but where it is a
question of the fate and death of men. Michel Leiris once
again said it: "By joining apparently gratuitous elements,
which he himself was not wary of, he created real myths."
The metamorphosis, with all of its related figures, occurs
in Impressions d 'Afrique and Locus Solus according to a set
number of rules which are evident. To my knowledge there
is one sequence of metamorphoses in the category of
magical spells: it's the story of Ursula, the Huron, and the
villains of Lake Ontario, who are under a spell (it's a system
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth
of magical punishment which takes on the image of a sym­
bolic moral value, and in which the sentence lasts until the
moment of freedom, at the same time predetermined but
uncertain) . Aside from this episode, there are no mice trans­
formed into coachmen, nor pumpkins becoming coaches.
But rather, the juxtaposition within a single form of two
orders of beings not close in the hierarchy which must cross
a whole intermediary gamut in order to be joined. Skipping
the animal kingdom, Fogar's palm tree is endowed with
human memory; but the iridescent bird goes straight to
the order of hard metallic objects: "The caudal apparatus
was wonderfully developed into a sort of solid armature of
cartilage which rose at first vertically to spread forward in
its upper region, creating above the flight area a real
horizontal dais. . . . Very sharp, the extreme back portion of
the armor formed a solid, slightly curved blade parallel to
the platform." Often several steps are eliminated, making
the slow maturation of the metamorphosis into a vertical
leap, a leap to the zenith like the metal swashbuckler whose
blows cannot be parried, or a vertiginous fall into the dark­
est realms of being; when Fogar opens his veins, he draws
from them a strange, soft greenish crystal: "The three blood
clots that Fogar held side by side in his left hand resembled
slender sticks of angelica, transparent and sticky. The
young Negro had obtained the desired results by his
voluntary catalepsy, whose sole aim was in fact to cause the
partial condensation of his own blood needed to furnish
the three solidified fragments so full of delicate colors." We
have already seen men as disembodied as stone vaulting,
ready to give out all the echoes of a cathedral. The old
principle of the continuity of beings, which gave order
in mythology to the confusion of metamorphosis and
propagated it like waves of sap, now is replaced by a dis­
continuous vertical figure which hides even greater powers
to disturb. These powers are all the greater because this
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
separation from the hierarchic is at the same time evident
and denied with strict simultaneity. Usually metamorphosis
follows order and time; it is a passage. In Roussel the super­
imposition of realms is hierarchic; there remains an
immobile and definitively fixed gap in the general contour
of the form that no evolution will come to resolve. The not­
natural is presented with the Aristotelian calm of a nature
whose being is drawn once and for all. The insects whose
rings of light are carried through the signs of the tarot deck
and glow on and off above the Maison-Dieu (House of
God) do not come from a fantastic forest, nor from the
hands of a magician; no spell endowed them with malevo­
lent signals. Old Felicity found an exact description of the
insect with a drawing of it in a treatise on entomology which
she bought from her neighbor, the bookseller Bazin. Trad­
itional metamorphosis takes place in a half-seen fusion, in
the course of a long twilight; with Roussel the meeting of
beings occurs in the broad daylight of a discontinuous
nature, at the same time close to and separated from itself.
It's as if they obeyed the principles of a telescopic ontology.
In Roussel's positive world the patience of the trainer
has replaced the power of the magician. But nonetheless it
is a sovereign power: Marius Boucharessas was awarded the
grand order of the Incom parables ( le crachat a delta, the
delta of spittle) for having trained a litter of kittens to per­
form on the parallel bars. Skarioffski wears on his wrist a
coral bracelet which is a gaint earthworm that has learned
to play the melodies of operettas on a water zither. But in
this world of performance-of only theatrical results­
training equals transmutation. Of course, long hours of
patience are required and innumerable rehearsals; but
the result is so perfect and the virtuosity of the animals has
become so great that these marvelous skills come into play
as if they were a profound essence. With a motion that is
almost natural, the marine and solar horses set themselves
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth
free from the twisted bodies of sea horses, only to super­
impose themselves on them, harnessed to the chariot of
Apollo, which is henceforth pulled by these double and
unique figures. The trainer is the mild, opinionated coun­
terfeiter of nature who starts from a nature separated
from itself and returned to itself as a superimposed image.
(Isn't it the same way that the unity of language was div­
ided in its volume by the process and maintained as dupli­
cates in its unique text? Perhaps the separation of things
and the distances of language present this unusual game.
But this is the problem of the Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afri­
que, not of the first impressions.)
And yet this synchronized and supple world is not a
world of well-being. It's true that nothing there is cruel or
constraining. Smiling Lelgouach plays refrains from Brit­
tany on his amputated tibia. In playing the water zither the
melodious worm has no recollection of his training: "He
gave the impression of customary virtuosity which, follow­
ing the impulse of the moment, had to play in a different
way every time, a particularly ambiguous passage." The
blood of the rooster Mopsus, and that of the dwarf Piz­
zighini, are only physiological oddities. Besides, what catas­
trophe could make these monsters dangerous by tearing
them away from Canterel's garden or Talou's kingdom?
What sudden violence could shake these strange animals,
completely surrounded by the vigilant world where they
have flourished? But this lack of danger and cruelty refers
back to a darkness within the thing itself which is quietly
contained there. Thus in the transparency of a crawling
sponge shaking with hiccups, thirsting for blood, can be
seen "in the middle of its nearly diaphanous tissue a real
miniature heart," which, acting on a drop of water, projects
a spray of precious stones. It's there within this heart com­
mon to man, to diamonds, and to the animal-plant that the
terrible sun can be found. It's a heart which lives and is not
86 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
alive, as in the fully expanded jellyfish, the musical tarot
cards, and call the cold, animated dead. And its insepar­
able duality (frozen liquid, gentle violence, solid decom­
position, and visible viscera) finds its powers multiplied
and not lessened from being on the other side of the glass
pane: it's a pure spectacle that nothing can interrupt or
resolve, and which remains there, destined to be seen,
displaying in broad daylight the internal being of its coun­
ternature. It's a persistent monstrosity, at the same time
understandable and without remedy. This cruelty without
claws (as in the rose, the peeled and naked Siamese cat in
the diamond-bright water) radiates only toward its own
center. It's probably this that can be called horror: to an
unsuspecting glance, the encounter with dead things
which are laid open, a certain tortuousness of being,
where open mouths do not cry out.
The old structure of legendary metamorphosis is
reversed here. The satisfaction of rewards or consolations,
the justice of punishment, the whole economy of retribution
found in traditional narratives has disappeared in favor of
a joining of beings which carries no lesson: the simple colli­
sion of things. The crippled character of legend, cured
because of his resignation, becomes in Roussel's narrative a
human torso who hurls himself at and bounces on musical
instruments like a large amputated finger dancing on the
keys of a piano. The child feeding the birds becomes here
the cataleptic adolescent who gives his sea-green blood to
mollusks (Snow White becomes Green Crystal) ; the ani­
mals who build a shelter for their benefactor become the
crucified jellyfish who forms above his master's head a
gigantic umbrella of twisting and turning arms. The people
in the age of "once upon a time" could make animals talk;
in Canterel's crystal floats "a human head composed solely
of cerebral matter, muscle, and nerves"; this was Danton's
head. A cat without fur swims around him and stimulates
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth
the dangling nerves by the means of an electric cone he
wears as a mask; the muscles move, seeming to "turn in
every direction the missing eyes"; what remains of the
mouth opens, closes, twists, bringing forth in its mute fury
long sentences silent as algae, which Canterel translates for
his guests. This is an inverted metamorphosis, the cat-fish
which makes the dead speak. From this head which has
retained in its decomposition only the reverse of the mask
(when it is masks which eternalize the dead) , the language
comes into being without voice and immediately dissolves
in the silence of the water. It is the paradox of this mechan­
ical reanimation of life, whereas the old metamorphoses
had as the essential goal of their strategy the maintenance
of life as alive.
That is the limit Roussel has deliberately set and traced
around the marvels of his limitless invention. A rooster can
be trained to write by spitting blood, or a rasher oflard can
be made to sing in graduated measure (that is the rule of
art; cf.Jean Ferry) ; skulls reduced to a pulp can be made to
declaim; the dead can be made to move; but to none of
these can the combination of resurrectine and vitalium give
back life. The whole order of animal life can be overcome,
and mites imprisoned in a tarot card become musicians
singing a Scotch chorus, but never does death become life
again. The resurrectine demonstrates that resurrection is
impossible: in this world beyond death that is staged, every­
thing is like life, its exact image. But it is imperceptibly
separated by a thin black layer, the lining. Life is repeated
in death, it communicates with itself across that absolute
event, but it can never be rejoined. It's the same as life, but
it's not life itself. From the scene acted out behind the
glass panes of Locus Solus to what is displayed in a flawless
analogy, from the rehearsal to what is rehearsed, there's
an impossible distance traversed by an arrow going from
one word to the same word within the process, language
88 D EATH A N D T H E LAB Y R I N T H
extending its reign to find again the identical but never
the identical meaning. Without a pause, repetition, lan­
guage, and death direct this play where they join one
another in order to show what they separate. Neither faith
nor concern for the positivism of science has forbidden
Roussel to cross the threshold of resurrection, but only the
basic structure of his language and the experiment he per­
formed on himself of ending (finality, termination, death)
and of renewal ( repetition, identity, endless cycle) . All his
machines function at the inferior limit of resurrection, on
the threshold where they will never turn the key. They form
the outward image of a discursive, mechanical, and abso­
lutely powerless resurrection. The great leisure of Locus
Salus, the "holiday," is an Easter Sunday which remained
free. Look among the dead, Canterel said, for the one to be
found there; here, in fact, he has not been resuscitated.
This special form of the duplication of life in death
presents the exact reverse and symmetrical moment which
is even nearer to the other side of the mirror: the moment
when death erupts in life. Thus are reconstituted: the scene
when the daughter of Lucius Egroizard was trampled to
death by fifteen bandits, fanciers of folk dancing; the last
illness of the sensitive writer Claude Le Calvez; the second
ending (according to a posthumous text rediscovered
centuries later) of Romeo andJuliet, the great crisis that over­
whelmed the groom with the red lantern and Ethelfleda
Exley, the woman with mirror fingernails; the suicide of a
Fran«;:ois-Charles Cordier when he finds out, thanks to
runes carved into a skull and a small diamond plaque, that
it was his father who killed his sister-fiancee. The aspect of
life that is repeated in death is death itself; as if all these
machines, these mirrors, these plays of light, these strings,
these unknown chemicals extract from an evidently con­
jured death only its presence, and its dominion, which was
already established. The scene plays death imitating life
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth 8g
imitating death in a manner as vivid as it was lived in life.
The barrier not abolished by the resurrectine repeats life
in death, and in life what was already dead. And on an
ordinary morning Franc;ois-Charles Cordier will make the
same gestures indefinitely: "His right hand searching in
one of his pockets comes out holding a revolver, while the
other promptly unbuttons his cardigan. Pressing the muz­
zle against his shirt over his heart, he pulls the trigger and
is stunned by the noise of the shot which reverberates
endlessly. We watch him fall down dead on his back."
Without end and always beginning again.
In all ages, the aim of the metamorphosis was to have
life triumph by joining beings or cheating death by pass­
ing from one state of being to another, but in Roussel's
works it is transformation in symmetry, which is also its
counter-meaning: the passage of life to death.

The labyrinth is linked to the metamorphosis, but accord­

ing to an equivocal plan: it leads, like Daedalus' palace, to
the Minotaur, the monstrous fruition which is marvel and
also a trap. But the Minotaur, by his very being, opens a
second labyrinth: the entrapment of man, beast, and the
gods, a knot of appetites and mute thoughts. The winding
of corridors is repeated, unless it is perhaps the same one;
and the mixed being refers to the inextricable geometry
which leads to him. The labyrinth is at the same time the
truth and the nature of the Minotaur, that which encloses
him externally and explains him from within. The labyrinth,
while hiding, reveals; it burrows into these joined beings it
hides, and it leads to the splendor of their origins. Thus
the horror of Roussel's beasts without species is divided by
the impossible and luminous trajectory of the labyrinth.
The image of it is Fogar's acrobatics. Between a basket full
of meowing kittens ( those who in another scene per­
formed on the parallel bars) and a carpet bristling with
go D EATH A N D T H E LA B YR I N T H
black darts where a moment ago a squid was writhing ( twist­
ing these same kittens in its tentacles) , Fogar has lined up
three ingots of gold bullion and prepares to throw a bar of
soap in their direction: "The soap, appearing to execute a
complete series of perilous leaps in a flying curve, then fell
on the first ingot; from there it bounced by turning a cart­
wheel to a second gold ingot which it brushed for an instant;
a third leap accompanied only by two very slow somer­
saults landed it on the third ingot of solid gold where it
remained standing upright, balancing itself." Thus between
two images of the world of animal metamorphoses, man's
skillfulness (which earlier had been combined in a union
twice monstrous) traces an improbable but essential line
which miraculously stops at a designated treasure.
Roussel's labyrinths often lead to a nugget of pure gold,
like the one Hello finds at the bottom of the green marble
grotto. But this treasure is not wealth ( the precious stones
and metal found with the ingot only have the role of indi­
cating profusion: a sign that the source had been found) .
If the old crown of the kings of Gloannic had been melted
down, if the metal ingot had been hidden and the secret
communicated to a one-eyed buffoon, and if there had
been a magic iron grille and signs in the heavens, it was
due to the necessity of both hiding and revealing Hello's
birthright. The treasure is worth less in its function as an
inheritance to be transmitted than as the keeper and
revealer of origins. At the center of the labyrinth lies the
birth, in eclipse, its origin separated from itself by the
secrecy and returned back to itself by the discovery.
There are two types of beings in Roussel: those produced
by the metamorphosis, duplicated in their being and stand­
.
ing in the middle of this opening, where there is no doubt
the question of death; and those whose origin is beyond
them, as if hidden by a black disk around which the laby­
rinth must turn in order to reveal it. For the first group
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth
there is no mystery about their birth; they emerged calmly
from nature or from a schooling just as serene, but they
dazzle by their expanded being. The others are ordinary
men and women (their description is that of children 's
tales: simple individualized beings, all good or bad, iden­
tified the moment they come into play by established cat­
egories) ; but it's their origin which is barred by a black
line-hidden because it's too remarkable, or remarkable
because it's shameful. The labyrinth wends its way toward
this glimmering light.
Impressions d 'Afrique presents on the stage of the Incom­
parables many lovely metamorphoses leading through a
maze of anecdotes which make up the light dramatic struc­
ture. Rul, the wife of King Talou, has brought into the world
an ugly baby whose eyes are horribly crossed, and who bears
in addition a red mark on the forehead (it is the louche a
envie [cross-eyed with envy] and prefigures L 'Etoile au Front
[Star on the Forehead] ) . She abandons her baby in the
forest, making everyone believe it has died, but the little girl
is found, recognized by her eyes and the mark on her
forehead. In order to assure the royal inheritance of her
bastards, Rul-an unfaithful wife (she is also "cross-eyed
with envy") -blinds her child. A faithless minister, a whole
and a mosquito hunter, a false mistress, a whole interplay
of snares and traps, coded letters, a riddle, a suede glove
with chalk markings, a bowler hat-and by the end every­
thing is discovered; that is to say, Sirdah recovers her
birthright and her sight. This story has repercussions
beyond itself, in accordance with a series of frameworks
that is characteristic of Roussel's labyrinths, in another
sequence which both envelops and determines it: Sirdah's
adventure is only the last episode of a dynastic feud begun
when the twin wives of the founder gave birth to identical
boys at the same moment. The tribunal on birthrights was
embarrassed and silenced by such a marvelous duplication:
92 DEATH A N D THE LAB YR I N T H
How to determine who was first? What is the absolute
moment of birth? Whereas the metamorphoses are dis­
played without secret in the performance, birth is always
seen as helpless or obscured. Sirdah's cross-eyed glance
(she sees double just as her ancestor saw double on the fatal
day of the births) which caused her to lose her birthright
and later enabled her to regain it; the loss of her sight once
her birthright had been regained; her blindness, cured on
the day her persecutors are executed, indicate this inter­
play of eclipse between "birth" and "vision." In Impressions
d 'Afrique the pure spectacle of the Incomparables, a place
of peaceful metamorphosis, alternates with the episodes
of the labyrinth of birth, up until the central episode of
Sirdah's cure and the exact relation of the enigma of her
birth to the sovereignty of sight. Perhaps this is the essence
of the celebration, of the festival in general: for once, to see
a being completely, and in seeing it, to recognize its birth.
But why should birth be in eclipse and so difficult to
perceive when so many monsters display themselves with­
out any reticence? Generally it is designated by the sign of
duality: the enigma of twin births (Souann's two wives; the
simultaneous birth of their sons; the disapperance of the
twin sisters claimed for a human sacrifice in L Etoile au
Front) ; the shame of hidden illegitimate births and parallel
family branches (Rul's children; the disinherited nephew
of the prefect's wife) ; identical and substituted children
(Andree Aparicio replacing Lydia Cordier in her father's
affections) ; the boy and girl of the same age brought up
together who are separated and united by love (Seil-Kor and
Nina; Andree and Franc;:ois Cordier) ; the rivalry between
two branches of a family fighting over an inheritance (Talou
and Yaour; and above all the treasure hunt in La Poussiere
de Soleils) . In these dualities the marks of birth are blurred;
the natural order is strangely reversed. It is no longer the
parents who are at the origin of the individual, who bring
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth 93
him forth into the light of day, but birth itself which
releases a duplication in which it loses itself. That is the
beginning of a labyrinth where birth is at the same time
prisoner and protected, revealed and hidden.
The double progression hides the relationship, but also
facilitates the discovery of the single thread. The secret of
the treasure, which would inform Hello of his birthright,
was confided by the dying king to his laughable double the
buffoon; then to a duplicate of this double, a pillow doll.
To safeguard his son from the bandits who made him their
prisoner, Gerard Lauwerys has substituted a plaster statue
for him; to find his dead daughter, once again, Lucius
Egrolzard tries to recreate the voice she would have
developed had she been able to grow up. The birth that is
hidden because of its dual nature is enclosed in a laby­
rinth of duality which finally permits its revelation. At the
end stands revealed absolute identity-"Ego" inscribed in
Hello 's gold ingot, the unique treasure hidden and shown
by the wisdom of Guillaume Blache.
This triumphant identity, however, does not reabsorb
all the doubles in which it momentarily lost itself. It leaves
behind, as its black envelope, the whole series of crimes
tied to the process of duplication that must now be pun­
ished. Whereas the metamorphosis and training occurred
in a unified world where it was only a question of being, the
births belong to a divided universe, where good and evil,
the just and the criminal, rewards and punishments are
endlessly discussed. And the rediscovered origin, in order
to return to its luminous state, necessitates the abolition of
evil. That is why there isn't any cruel monster in Roussel,
nor in turn is there a celebration without the aspect of
punishment. And the severity of the punishment consists
of the pure and simple duplication of the labyrinth con­
structed out of cruelty to hide the birth. Rul, the evil queen,
blinded her daughter, so her heart was pierced by the
 < D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
insertion of a needle through the eyelet of her bodice.
Mossem, her lover, forged the false death certificate of
Sirdah; thus it is engraved on the soles of his feet with red­
hot irons. Nair, the ingenious inventor of a series of traps,
is condemned to make them indefinitely and reproduce
to the end of his days these tenuous labyrinths of threads,
such as the ones he formerly made to help his accom­
plices. Thus the maze where the birth is hidden is
reduplicated: the first time it is reproduced in order to be
understood and unraveled; the second time it is cruelly
repeated in public to punish the guilty. The origin is
finally restored to its unity only by the triumph of vision;
that is what separates the truth from its mask, divides good
from evil, separates being from appearance (Tsar Alexis'
solar red stare unmasks Pletchaieffs assassin, who, trans­
fixed by the bloody lens, is struck down by the same symp­
toms as his victim and dies of the same wounds) .
But when finally brought to light, the birth was not
simple. It was already foretold by a sign which anticipated
the event. That is probably the meaning of L 'Etoile au
Front the three acts of the play are taken up by a presenta­
tion of objects more or less banal in appearance that hide
the secret of a birth. The labyrinth of their marvelous
story as shown by Treze, or Mr.Joussac, invariably reveals a
remarkable origin linked to the birth of a child, to ill-fated
or guilty love, to rivalries among descendents, to the con­
flicts between the legitimate and illegitimate branches of a
family: hence the secret hidden and then revealed by these
enigmatic objects. But before the inventory of this little
museum is given, several negligible scenes indicate their
meaning and perhaps their origin. It concerns twin sisters
born in India, ordained by a heavenly sign as principal
victims of a human sacrifice. It's this birthmark which is
the subj ect of the whole play, a dazzling sign, however
secret, visible and occult; each object of the little theatrical
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth 95
museum is imbued with it, and it was already shining at the
portico: the star on the forehead. That is why the play
concludes as it had begun and as it pursued its subject: by
evoking the sign, the enormous element of chance and its
evidence: "How many failed careers, splendid in the eyes
of the ordinary, accomplish their journeys by sailing
against the wind! Here one of our elect, misunderstood by
his peers who fight against him through hunger, endures
misery to attain his goal; where another would have lived
in idleness, he gives to the world a strange example of
assiduous labor and manly perseverance." Of course, here
we are saluting Roussel in person. But above all, this figure
we already know is joined to chance (notice "how curiously
up and down the social ladder in all ages stars were
bestowed on foreheads") and to repetition, since once the
sign is manifested, time has preceded itself, the birth is
already designated by disaster or glory, and history is no
more than this sign endlessly repeated.
At the core of the labyrinth finally unraveled, the birth
designated by a star on the forehead is shown for what it is:
an image of metamorphosis where chance and repetition
are united. The destiny of the sign, already cast, initiates a
sequence of time and space in which each figure will echo
it, will faithfully reiterate it, and will bring it back to the
starting point. In all its swarms of adventure, life will never
be more than the duplication of its star; its existence main­
tains what it was given before coming into being. The
enigma of birth has the same significance as the scenes of
life prolonged by the resurrectine: to show in one way or
another the basic event (birth and death) in an exact repeti­
tion; for the one, the imminence of death, for the other, the
promise of predestination, which is what life repeats with­
out fail. At the most enigmatic moment, when all paths stop
and when one is at the point of being lost, or at the abso­
lute begining, when one is on the threshold of something
g6 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
else, the labyrinth suddenly again offers the same: its last
puzzle, the trap hidden in the center-it is a mirror behind
which the identical is located. This mirror teaches that life
before coming alive was already the same, as it will be the
same in the immobility of death. The mirror which reflects
the birth that's explained by the labyrinth is the one where
death looks upon itself, in turn reflected by it. And the
nature of the labyrinth comes infinitely close to the meta­
morphosis resulting in the passage from life to death, and
in the maintenance of life in death. The labyrinth leads to
a Minotaur which is a mirror, a mirror of birth and of death,
the deep and inaccessible point of all metamorphoses.
There the differences converge and again take on their
identity: the chance element of death and that of origin,
divided by the slender sheet of mirror, is placed in the
dizzying position of being the double. No doubt this is the
same position occupied by the process when, beginning
with the chance element oflanguage, which it duplicates, it
causes through metamorphosis a treasure of differences to
spring forth whose identity it recovers byjoining them in a
labyrinth of words. The rule of the process is still to be read
in all these duplicated monsters, in all these hidden births.
Perhaps the first character in the Impressions d 'Afrique,
Nair, the man with the traps, riveted to his platform and
condemned till the end of time to make imperceptible
labyrinths of thread which are metamorphosed fruits
(fruit-animal since they resemble a chrysalis in the mak­
ing)-could this be the presence of Roussel himself on
the threshold of his work, tied to it, unveiling it before it
has come to term (by the radiating web spun by his minute
spiders) , duplicating his own end (by this unceasing torture) ,
showing what it is through the depths of his language: a
metamorphosis-labyrinth? "A prisoner on his pedestal, Nair
had his right foot held down by a thick rope lacing which
formed a snare tightly fixed to the solid platform; similar to
The Metamorphosis and the Labyrinth 97
a living statue, he made slow, punctuating gestures while
rapidly murmuring a series of words he had learned by
heart. In front of him, on a specially shaped stand, a fragile
pyramid made of three pieces of bark fastened together
held his whole attention; the base, turned in his direction
but sensibly raised, served as a loom; on an extension of the
stand, he found within reach a supply of fruit husks covered
on the outside with a gray vegetable substance reminiscent
of the cocoons of larvae ready to transform themselves into
chrysalises. By using two fingers to pinch a fragment of
these delicate envelopes and by slowly bringing back his
hand, the young man created an extendable tie similar to
the gossamer threads which during the season of renewal
spread through the wood; he used these imperceptible
filaments to compose a magical work, subtle and complex,
for his two hands worked with unequaled agility, knotting,
tangling in every way the ligaments of dreams which grace­
fully amalgamated."
In the Impressions d 'Afrique metamorphosis provides the
important scenes, which are linked together solely by the
slight network of the labyrinth. Locus Salus is organized
according to another scheme of checks and balances: in
the maze of paths, impossible forms come forward; but in
the cells for resurrection (that is to say, in the places of
metamorphosis) difficult labyrinths are revealed (long
tales of unusual births, treasures lost and found) . In Rous­
sel's plays, the balance is again disturbed but in another
direction: the labyrinth carries it away.
But there is a crossover which is stranger yet. The figures
of the metamorphosis appear in a sort of quasi-theater:
the stage of the Incomparables, the coronation festivities,
Canterel's garden arranged like a pastoral setting, mario­
nettes of dead people. The vocation of all these strange
mixed beings, whether from the depth of their nature or
from the first day of their apprenticeship, was to be seen;
g8 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
their skills were meaningful only for one performance.
By contrast, the labyrinth, which only unfolds within a
hidden landscape, reveals nothing that can be seen: it
partakes of the order of enigma, not of the theater. Yet it is
the structure of the labyrinth which completely upholds
Roussel's plays, as if it were a matter of eliminating every­
thing that goes into its theatricality, to let appear as visible
on stage only the shadow play of the secret. By contrast,
never is it more a question of masks, disguises, scenes,
actors, and spectacles than in the nontheatrical texts: the
metamorphoses are only brought forth on stage through a
narration, therefore changed and caught in the labyrinth
of a discourse given second- or thirdhand (for example,
the imitation of Shakespeare in a scene added within a
continuous narrative) .
Roussel's work seems to have revolved completely
around this relationship-including the texts which do
not use the process. La Doublure and its cavalcade of masks,
La Vue with the gigantic flower growing inside a glass lens,
are of the order of metamorphosis, of vision, and of the
theater. The Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique pushes the
spoken and invisible labyrinth of birth and parentage to
the ultimate point of destruction of language. Perhaps the
process is only a singular figure taken in a larger context
where the labyrinth ( the line to infinity, the other, the
lost) and the metamorphosis (the circle, the return to the
same, the triumph of the identical) cross each other.
Perhaps the dimension of ageless myth is that of all
language-of language moving toward infinity in the laby­
rinth of things, but whose marvelous and essential poverty
forces it back upon itself by giving it the power of meta­
morphosis; to say other things with the same words, to give
to the same words another meaning.
 6
The Surface of Things

W H A T of Roussel's books which are not included among

"certain of his books"? Those questionable texts about
which he said and repeated that they are "completely out­
side of the process"? Is their resemblance to those within it
only due to a coincidence-not due to birth or to deliber­
ate artifice? In 1928, while researching the network of
communications beneath Roussel's language to show its
absolute control, Vitrac had compared the clumsy actor
whose sword would not fit into its scabbard in the first lines
of La Doublure with the understudy in Chiquenaude, who
plays the role of Mephistopheles, defeated due to the darn­
ing of his pants. To which Roussel answered firmly: "You
must not look for relationships; there are none." There is no
answering this. The moth-eaten cushion of the billiard table
gave rise to Talou 's initialed royal cloak (because the process
is there as well as here) . The worms and moths that devoured
the red lining of the pants are not those mentioned by the
understudy (because there is no process) . It is a simple
1 00 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
criterion. The fortress of the process must be left in isol­
ation just as Roussel defined the subject and drew the exact
boundaries at the moment of his death.
It seems that Roussel thought his early works were of no
importance. But now we know very well through a whole
body of contemporary literature that the language of La
Doublure and La Vue, like certain useless spaces discovered
by geometry, has suddenly become populated with literary
beings which would be inconceivable without him. Neg­
lected for a long time, today he is the foundation of a
whole concrete world for which he blindly formulated the
premises and axioms. In addition, one could prove that he
is like the fundamental geometry of the process (which I
will try to demonstrate) . This language will appear as the
place of prodigious births-and of many others still
unknown to us.
Mter the failure of La Doublure ( 1 897) and the resulting
crisis began the whole "period of prospecting," which lasted
from 1 898 to 1900 or even 1902. No doubt it was the period
when he was writing the genesis-texts (cyclical tales between
repeated sentences) , none of which satisfied Roussel except
for Chiquenaude, published in 1900. We know that this was
the origin of the process: the circular form is still used in
Nanon and Une Page de Folklore Breton, which appear seven
years later in the newspaper Gaulois du Dimanche. Soon after,
the process becomes generalized with Impressions d 'Afrique.
Between the period of Chiquenaude and the period of
Impressions, five texts appeared, all outside of the process.
It is undeniable that L 1nconsolable and Les Tetes de Carton
could have been written earlier, at the time of La Doublure,
from which they are like falling stars. But La Vue, La Source
(The Source) , and Le Concert (The Concert) were no
doubt written when the machine for repetition was already
functioning. Since nothing ever authorizes doubting
Roussel's words (he was too economical with them) , it
The Surface of Things I0 I

must be admitted that these three texts open within the

realm of the process a paren thesis that delineates a rounded
autonomous space, like a lens containing a minute land­
scape whose dimensions are not reducible to its setting.
As to the last work, the Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique,
completed in 1 928, it was begun in 1915, right after Locus
Solus. Only the writing of La Poussiere de Soleils and of
L Etoile au Front interrupted it, renewing for a while the
process which Nouvelles Impressions escaped. Thus the
technique of repeated words only had exclusive hold dur­
ing a fairly short period of time, perhaps less than ten
years. It was during this time that Roussel gave up poetry
(since the internal and inaudible echo of words between
the clicking of Ejur's machine and the murmurs of Can­
terel's garden creates enough rhymes and alone defined
the fertile area of the poetic foundation) . But from the
beginning to the end of his work, and without exception,
Roussel's language has always been double, now holding
discourses without the process, now holding discourses
with the process. The first was in poetry, the second in
prose. It's as if this fundamental poetics which almost
exclusively preoccupied Roussel's life was duplicated by
versification (La Doublure, La Vue, Nouvelles Impressions
d 'Afrique) and by the process (Impressions d 'Afrique, Locus
Solus, and the plays) , with complicated interferences at
times-interruptions, crossovers, and certain effects of
duplication like the mixture of rhyme and of the process
found in Une Page de Folklore Breton and also in Chiquenaude.
Only one possibility is excluded: a language without either
process or rhyme, that is, without duplication.
This double language superimposed on itself recalls the
counterpoint that is constant in Locus Solus, which is heard
beneath the visible discourse of the dead, Canterel's low
voice explaining in prose what poetic repetition is being
accomplished on the other side of the glass pane, and what
1 02 DEATH A N D THE LAB Y RI N T H
rhyme is made to echo between life and death. Ludovic is
also recalled, the singer with the enormous throat and mul­
tiple voice, who comes on the stage of the Incomparables
to make batteries of harmonic canons with his throat: "With
a pretty tenor key, Ludovic slowly began the famous 'Frere
jacques' ; but while the extreme left of his mouth was in
motion, pronouncing the well-known words, the rest of
the enormous pit remained motionless and closed. The
moment when the first notes of the words 'Dormez-vous'
resounded a third higher, a second division of the mouth
began 'Frerejacques, ' starting from the tonic; through years
of working at it Ludovic had succeeded in dividing his lips
and tongue into independent parts and could without
trouble articulate at the same time several linked parts of
different tunes and words; actually the left side moved com­
pletely, showing teeth without causing the right side to
move, which remained closed and imperturbable." One
can entertain the thought that Roussel also learned to make
his tongue forked and his voice a fugue, to superimpose his
language and to silence for a measure half of his discourse
(which is what he did by maintaining in silence the counter
sentences of Impressions and Locus Solusup until the appear­
ance of that other voice in How I Wrote Certain ofMy Books) ,
while his writing, his unique mouth, gave the impression
of being absolutely linear. This was an immoderate
amount of work as was Ludovic's, who, "exhausted by the
terrible mental effort, left wiping his brow."
It is reminiscent of Guillaume Blache's system of double
entrances (a dangerous trick, as history has proven) on
the threshold of La Poussiere de Soleils. In order to put one's
hand on the skull with the sonnets, which leads straight to
a well hiding millions-a first glimmer of particles of the
sun-one must push two doors, one as open as the other
(so afraid was old Guillaume that his treasure would not
be found) , one as closed as the other (so frightened was he
The Surface of Things
that it would be lost from such easy access) . Once these
thresholds are crossed, the path is the same; the two rival
groups progress along identical stages. Perhaps also lead­
ing to the final treasure of the work-to this well, at the
same time a mine and a forge, whose glow was shown from
the beginning by the poem L < me--there are two roads
which are the same, two thresholds for the same road, two
doors that can be opened with one motion, the first being
the secret (unveiled, thus becoming nonsecret) and the
second being the nonsecret (because it does not need to
be uncovered, remaining in the shadow and under the
seal of a paradoxical secret) . The absolute exclusion of
one by the other is only the threshold of their identity:
here on the one hand is the secret of the nonsecret and on
the other hand the nonsecret of the secret. The key which
locks and prevents all transgressions opens in depth a
threshold similar as a twin to the one of identity.
Such is the ambiguity (by definition impossible to
explain) where the portion of the work that is not revealed
vacillates endlessly: it's useless to consider the additional
burden of an occult process, of a secret that remains secret.
That portion Roussel always placed outside of the process.
This evidently does not mean that it was structured without
a process; nothing prevents a strictly logical attempt to
uncover another process in the texts that he did not explain,
the only condition being that it not be the same process.
Jean Ferry tried, without being absolute about the hypo­
thesis, the Morse code for Nouvelles Impressions. Why not? I
don' t know whether it's true or false; I only fear-with all
respect due such an ardent interpreter-that it is not good
methodology. Before establishing the equation Absence
of One Process = Presence of Another, it must be kept in
mind that this absence could also be equivalent to the non­
existence of any process. It's necessary in order to open up
the whole field of possibility only to consider that the
 DEATH A N D THE LAB Y RI N T H
"other" works fall outside of the revelation of the process.
It's up to us to accept this lack of revelation whose empty
certainty must uphold our neutrality. Let there be object­
ive questioning where our confusion will not retreat. This
very lack of explanation should not be taken as a synonym
for a better hidden secret (which can eventually be brought
to light) , but rather as an indecision which is by its funda­
mental nature insurmountable. It is insurmountable
because the "other" texts appear outside of the revelation
only to the extent that "certain" ones have been explained.
However, this explanation leaves "unexplained" the lim­
pidity of La Vue or the need for a meticulous explanation
to fortify, it seems, the long didactic discourse of Nouvelles
Impressions. It's the gesture of unveiling which casts an inevit­
able shadow, and henceforth deprives so many calm texts
of the possibility of having an indelible secret. The certainty
of a secret must not be placed on the same level as a prob­
able secret, but carried to extreme; the questioning brings
out the evidence of the relationship of revelation to its
shadow. It is to this relationship (and not to the hypothetical
symmetry of secrets) that we must address our questions.
The texts outside of the process are up agaisnt the reve­
lation of the process of which they form the opposite side,
the necessarily dark half. Whatever in them is invisible
became so (and visibly such) when it was shown what was
invisible in Impressions and Locus Solus and in the plays.
This invisibility which is rooted in the revelation is nothing
more than pure and simple visibility heightened by the in­
different gesture of revelation. In these texts that were not
explained, which retain their original enigma of a solution
that comes from elsewhere and is applicable elsewhere, the
visible and the invisible are intimately mixed. But that's to
say little: for in the inextricability there could be a subtler
interplay of the secret; in fact, the visible and the invisible
are of the same material and of the same indivisible sub-
The Surface of Things
stance. Light and shadow are from the same sun. Invisibil­
ity is made evident by the visible. It owes its absolute trans­
parency to the fact of not being exposed, which leaves it,
when it comes into play, in the shadow. What hides that
which is not hidden, what exposes what cannot be
revealed-no doubt that is the visible.
The enigma inherent in the visible (which makes it
essentially invisible) is that it cannot be discussed on its
own terms, but from a distance which proscribes or per­
mits invisibility. What is known about the process and
about all the language which is placed under its heading
will not serve as a key to decipher that which has no key,
but will open to us by its very distance the space through
which we can see what the original blinding visibility,
equal in all its aspects, solar in each of its parts (similar to
the aqua micans of Canterel's crystal) , prevented us from
seeing. The revelation of the process has cast its shadow
on all the works outside of the process, but it has estab­
lished that gray dimension at the limit of which is finally
revealed to the observer what had already been shown
where the brilliance was blinding.

La Doublure, La Vue, Le Concert, La Source, Les Tetes de

Carton, and L 1nconsolable are spectacles, pure spectacles
without respite. Objects are displayed in a profusion which
approaches and yet is far from what constitutes the theater.
Nothing exists which isn't visible and which doesn' t owe
its existence to the fact of being seen. But in the theater the
visible merely forms the transition to language where it is
entirely directed. In Roussel's spectacles the direction is
reversed: the language turns toward things, and the metic­
ulous detail it constantly brings forward is reabsorbed little
by little in the silence of objects. It becomes prolix only to
move in the direction of their silence. It is as if a theater was
being emptied of everything that makes it comic or tragic,
1 06 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
spilling out its useless decor, haphazardly pell-mell, before
an unpitying sovereign and disinterested observer. It is a
theater which had fallen into the inanity of spectacle and
only offered the contours of what could be seen: the car­
nival, with its cardboard treasures, its colored papers, is
the static, miniature, and round scene of a souvenir lens.
But this slight visibility dominates triumphantly. What
doesn' t it offer in its inexhaustible generosity? The
vignette is in the letterhead of a sheet of the stationery
often found in the lounges of hotels, placed in small,
narrow black boxes which are open and divided into two
compartments, the other destined to hold the envelopes.
The poem Le Concert enabled me to count in the scene
eighty-seven characters (I may be mistaken) perfectly
recognizable by their appearance, their gestures, what
they're doing, their concerns at times, often their pro­
fessions, and their personalities as seen by their expres­
sions. In addition, there is an indeterminate number of
orchestra musicians (one can distinguish the violin bows,
their uneven alignment, the sweeping motions which
brought them to different heights) , the audience,
groups of strollers, customers around the coconut stand,
children who are there "frolicking." This is not all: there
are, besides, horses, a lake, boats on the lake; not far
from there an omnibus, trunks, grooms. I forgot the
hotel, "massive, high, immense," which eclipsed every­
thing, "it was so colossal, monstrously vast." Around it
"nothing is there for contrast." This small vignette on
the letterhead is like the circular lens embedded in a
souvenir pen, or the label on a bottle of Evian water, a
prodigious labyrinth when seen from above. Instead of
concealing, it naively places before one's eyes a network
of paths and boxwood hedges, long stone walls, the masts,
the water, those minuscule precise people going in all
directions with the same fixed step. Language needs
The Surface of Things 1 07
only turn to these silent figures to attempt through infin­
ite accumulation to recreate that flawless visibility.
In truth, all these things need not be highlighted: it's
like placing these things in a deep perspective. No great
effort is needed to make them reveal their secret: an
autonomous movement brings them forth, displaying
what they are and even a litde more. What is seen overlaps
both the past and the future, creating a temporal vibration
which doesn't negate but rather increases their hieratism.
They do not only stand at this point in time, defined by a
glance, but rather in ever-deepening layers wherein lies
their whole being, with all its possibilities. A gesture, a
profile, an expression reveal nothing less than the whole
nature and this form wherein being and time confirm one
another. Here, for example, on the pink label of a bottle
of mineral water:
A big woman
With a prudent, cool demeanor, has, happily for her, a high
opinion
Of herself and is never intimidated.
She believes she knows almost everything; she is a blue-
stocking
And pays no attention to people who read little.
She is decisive when literature is discussed.
Her letters, without an awkward word, without any
corrections,
Are finished only after many laborious drafts.
Nothing of what is seen here is given nor can be given
visually. This visibility is self-contained and offers itself to
no one, drawing an interior celebration of being which
illuminates it from head to toe for a spectacle without
possible spectator. It's a visibility separate from being seen.
Although access to it is through a glass lens or a vignette on
a label or a letterhead, it's not to stress the interception of
an apparatus between the eye and what it sees, nor to insist
1 08 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
on the scene's lack of reality, but as the result of reduction,
to place the act of seeing in parentheses and at another
level. Due to this interception, the eye is not situated on
the same plane as the things seen; it cannot impose on
them its point of view, nor its habits, nor its limits. It must,
without any intervention, let them "be seen" by virtue of
their being; there's invisibility only within its own space.
The conclusion of La Source underlines this effect so that it
can' t be ignored; the last figure on the label shows a man
reading a letter; everything about his character is made
known-his egotism, his fear of infection, his distrust of
doctors, his taste for medicine, the smugness of his self­
pity. Suddenly a hand, "horrifying and agile," reaches out
and takes away the bottle of mineral water (to which the
label is pasted) ; vision is restored to its natural dimen­
sion-the rule of distance bordered by the imperceptible:
The American, sprawling more than ever, lights
A cigar; the excited couple, over there,
Always whispers things one can' t hear.

The space registered by looking at "the real" is shadowy,

hazy, in layers, and deep, and circled by darkness in the
distance. Within the magical circle, on the contrary,
things appear in their insistent, autonomous existence, as
if they were endowed with an ontological obstinacy which
breaks with the most elementary rules of spatial relation.
Their presence, like a boulder, is self-sufficient, free of any
relation.
There is a fundamental lack of proportion: seen the
same way are the porthole of the yacht and the bracelet of a
woman chatting on deck, the wings of a kite and the two
points formed by the tips of a stroller's beard raised slightly
by the wind (which is very strong at this spot on the beach) .
( Happily the Nouvelles Impressions will teach us not to con­
fuse objects of such different sizes. ) It's understandable
The Surface of Things
why the cardboard heads were so attractive to Roussel:
they systematically destroyed proportion by superimpos­
ing an enormous face on a body which then looked small
as an insect, and the vivid colors of the beings emphasized
an imperceptible detail which barely existed. The same
effect is used in selecting names for the characters (Father
Vulcan, Mrs. Embroidery, Young Drawer) : the assimilation
of things and people, the minuscule and the immense, the
living and the inert, within one neutral being who would
be at the same time disproportionate and homogenous.
La Vue, as if in immediate contradiction of its title, opens
up a universe without perspective. It combines a vertical
point of view (which allows everything to be embraced as
if within a circle) and a horizontal point of view (which
places the eye at ground level where it can only see what is
in the foreground) to such an extent that everything is
seen in perspective, but each thing, however, is seen front­
ally. It is a perspective simultaneously from the front and
from above which allows, as in the works of certain primi­
tive painters, an orthogonal presentation of things. There
is no privileged point around which the landscape will be
organized and with distance vanish little by little; rather
there's a whole series of small spatial cells of similar dimen­
sions placed right next to each other without consideration
of reciprocal proportion (such as the cells for resurrection
in Locus Salus) . Their position is never defined in relation
to the whole but according to a system of directions of
proximity passing from one to the other as if following the
links in a chain: "to the left," "in front of them to the left,"
"above, higher," "further," "further continuing on the left,"
"at the end of the beach," "still close enough to them," "a
little more on the left on the other side of the arcade."
Thus spreads the sand of La Vue, in discontinuous grains,
uniformly magnified, evenly illuminated, placed one
next to the other in the same noonday sun-already La
1 10 D EA T H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
Poussiere de Soleils. Near or far, the scenes are of the same
scale, seen with the same precision, as if each had an equal
and inalienable right to be seen. It happens, of course,
that one figure placed in front of another will hide it ( the
foam on the waves blurs the outline of the rocks; a high wave
hides three quarters of a boat) : but these are surface effects,
not effects of depth. The disappearance of form is not due
to the essential rules of perspective, but to a sort of competi­
tion where other forms impose themselves, still leaving the
first ones a right to visibility which always culminates by
passing through into the language with a strange power to
circle around the obstacle that meant to hide it. In La
Source a woman who is barely visible-she's half-hidden in
a sedan chair-is described in twenty-four verses which
inform us: she has an Oriental hairdo, she dressed hastily,
she is hare-brained but with a quick hand, she allows people
to pursue her, she is not reasonable. To be seen is not a
result of visibility, it's an aspect of nature which is endlessly
affirmed. Once inside this nonspatial place, whether in
the lens of the pen or on the label-in this fictional world,
analogous to reproduction, created of vague markings
printed on paper-a plethora of beings serenely impose
themselves; the luminosity of the whole never diminishes.
It is a perpetual, soft emanation, existing outside of time.
Everything is luminous in Roussel's description. But
nothing there speaks of daylight: there is neither time nor
shadow. The sun doesn 't move; being equitable to all
things, it is poised above each. Light is not a medium in
which lines and colors are bathed, nor the element in which
vision can find them. It's divided into two domains which
are not related: there is a sovereign white light whose
ultimate sweep delivers the being of things; and then, in
sharp surface bursts, in a fleeting plan, lightning falls on
the surface of things, forming a sudden stroke, transitory,
quickly darkened, etching an angle or a bulge, but leaving
The Surface of Things ll l
intact, obstinately in place, in their earlier presence, the
things that it illuminates-without ever penetrating them.
This second light is never from the depth of things; it
spreads over each thing in rapid bursts: "Rare and slender
illuminations run on the water"; on a vanity table in front
of a mirror, the two slightly parted blades of the scissors
"are covered with reflections and brightness"; on a boat at
sea a man is leaning on a railing, his left hand holding the
metal rail which runs along the deck; on the first knuckle
of his third finger he wears a ring "which in its present
position flashes lightning." In this fragmented space with­
out proportion, small objects thus take on the appearance
of flashing beacons. It's not a question of signaling their
position in this instance, but simply their existence. It's as
if the great neutral light that sweeps over them and
spreads them out to the very root of their being suddenly
contracted, focusing on a point on the surface to form for
a split second a flaming crest. The basic deployment of the
visible resurfaces as the contradictory brilliance that
blinds. The division here between the luminous being and
the dazzling lightning forms a plan familiar to Canterel' s
technique; by right it could reanimate the whole past and
make it fundamentally visible. However, only a momentary
brilliance surfaces, so special, so intensified, that it appears
as an enigma before a blinded glance.
And from one illumination to another the inventory is
drawn up; its momentum is ambiguous. It's hard to tell
whether the eyes are moving or if the things come forward
of their own accord. This spectacle has an equivocal motion
(half inspection, half parade) where everything appears
still, both eyes and landscape, but where without guide­
lines, or design, or motor, they never stop moving, each in
relation to the other. This creates a strange configuration,
both linear and circular. It is circular since everything is
open to view without any possible vanishing point, or hid-
l l2 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
ing place, or openings to the right or the left, like the
circular glass lens set in the pen which frames the small
paper circle on which is printed the curve of the beach
and the convex line of the sea; just as on the pink rect­
angular label covering the bottle of mineral water whose
edges almost meet at the back, barely leaving a slender
transparent strip on the other side of the picture. Along
these meridians things appear in their fullness, forming
concentric circles on the surface of the language where
they manifest themselves; flowers increasing in size as
they approach the center. But this inexhaustible wealth of
visible things has the property (which both correlates
and contradicts) of parading in an endless line; what is
wholly visible is never seen in its entirety. It always shows
something else asking to be seen; there's no end to it.
Perhaps the essential has never been shown, or, rather,
there's no knowing whether it has been seen or if it's still
to come in this never-ending proliferation. Thus on the
letterhead of the stationery, amid the strollers, the car­
riages, the hotel, the boats, the porters running errands,
the vendors, how is one to know before the ending that
beneath the huge coolie-hat roof of the kiosk, the group
of seated men depicted as making rapid movements with
their instruments, immobile, silent, are drawing with
negative music the central figure of the image? It's that
things present themselves in a parade, at the same time
pressing one against the other, forming a virtually infinite
straight line, but meeting again at their extremities, in
such a way that there is no way of knowing just by looking
at these figures (as in looking at The Hunt by Uccello) if
these figures are the same or different, if there are more
or if those from the beginning have already returned, if
they're just beginning, or if they have been repeated.
Time is lost in space, or rather, it's always absolutely
positioned in this deep and impossible figure on the
The Surface of Things l l3
right, which is a circle: there what has no ending 1s
revealed as being identical to what begins again.

Such was the celebration of the dead in Locus Solus and

that of time regained on the beach at Ejur. But there the
return was discursive and easily analyzed; there was the past
and there was its new beginning; there was the scene and
there was the discourse which repeated it by explaining it;
there were hidden words and machines that surreptitously
threw them out again. In La Doublure and La Vue what
repeats is given at the same time as what is repeated; the
past with the present, the secret with the silhouettes, the
performance with the objects themselves. That's the pre­
rogative of the pictures or vignettes described by La Vue,
Le Concert, and La Source: they are reproductions but so
anonymous, so universal, that they bear no relation to any
original model. No doubt they represent nothing other
than what they are ( they are reproductions without having
to resemble anything) ; the duplication is internalized.
The language speaks spontaneously in all these things
observed without there being any ulterior duplicate texts
where the language is divided and its destruction creates,
separately, one from the other, the mechanisms or the
scenes. The discourse which describes them in detail finally
is the one that explains them. It's a discourse without any
volume, running along the surface of things, adjusting to
them by an innate adaptation without apparent effort, as if
the luminosity that opens the heart of beings was in add­
ition the source of the words to name them:
My glance penetrates
The glass lens and the transparent
Backdrop comes into focus . . .
It shows a sandy beach
Just when it is lively and colorful.
The weather is beautiful.
1 14 D EATH A N D THE LAB YRINTH
With this beginning, what is seen is easily described; but
also everything begins to speak with inexhaustible volubil­
ity in the clear circle of visibility. It is as if the language
carefully applied to the surface of things to describe them
were thrown out again by a prolixity inherent in these
things. The laconic vocabulary of description is blown up
by all the discourse of what usually is never apparent.
Little by little this unwonted and chatty visibility takes over
the whole field of perception and opens it up for a lan­
guage that then replaces it: everything begins to speak a
language that is visible, and its invisible content is made
visible. From the figures drawn with one stroke rises a
chirping as limpid as their still profiles, their immobile
fingers. This chattering is not about to stop in the glass
lens where La Vue holds, enclosed like a shell, the sound of
waves. This is how the silent gestures of the man speak:
He is walking between two fairly pretty women,
Each of whom has taken one of his arms
In a friendly way . . .
To strongly emphasize what he is saying,
He struggles and does everything he can; he uses
The short, uncertain and limited
Freedom that remains to his wrists and hands . . . .
He wants people to believe his version
And above all that it not be thought he's exaggerating,
That he deals with the subject in a high-handed, frivolous
way,
When indeed he stays as close as possible
To the strictest truth; he is successful;
He is listened to attentively; he provokes
A mood of humor, and due to the scenes he evokes,
Their shoulders shake, convulsed with laughter.

These are the two limits of perception (three figures arm

in arm, shaking with laughter) ; a whole verbal world dilates
and brings the imperceptible into full view, and the simple
The Surface of Things II5
thing that seemed, because of the words, to leap to the
eye, now seems dispersed, on the verge of being lost in this
rising verbal swarm. This is the opposite technique from
the process: from duplicated and dislocated language the
process creates a whole expanse of strange flowers, metalic,
dead, whose silent growth hides the monotonous beating
of words. In La Vue and the related texts, it's the things
which are open in the middle that from their plentitude
give birth to a whole proliferation of language as if by sheer
excess of life. The words conjure up a mundane world of
things (the same things) from one shore to the other, often
childish in thought, in feelings, and of familiar murmuring.
Just like the hollowness that alienates a word from itself when
repeated, the process springs from the mass of machinery
never visible, but exposed without mystery to be seen.
And yet this world of absolute language is, in a certain way,
profoundly silent. The impression given is that everything
has been said, but in the depth of this language something
remains silent. The faces, the movements, the gestures,
even the thoughts, secret habits, the yearnings of the heart
are presented like mute signs on a backdrop of n igh t.

A horse is heard neighing

Over there, in the distance. Without warning,
To make her turn around completely, he slowly pushes her
With his right arm, gently holding her tight,
While taking her by the left hand. He holds her
Without saying a word, looking at her. He has just stopped,
But she still doesn 't understand
What he wants; now he sweeps her along,
Making her turn around him,
By giving her his arm to lean on;
And almost without knowing how, she finds herself
Turned in the opposite direction. He looks at her broodingly
Without a word, keeping his usual bearing.
They start walking again, with the sea on their left
1 16 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
There is nothing else in this final detour (it concludes the
carnival in Nice) other than the first opening of words and
objects, their mutual coming to light, and this pause, a
body pivoting around, the reversal of all perspective-the
same things but in the other direction; that is, a closing off
of what had been open, and finally the disappearance of
what had appeared. This is the whole enigma of the visible
and why language has the same origin as what it describes.
But isn 't this precisely the function of the process: to
speak and to show in a simultaneous motion, to build up
as if it were a prodigious and mythical machine this con­
fused source of language and objects? In How I Wrote Cer­
tain ofMy Books one sentence seems to carry more weight:
"I was led to take a random phrase from which I drew
images by distorting it a little as though it were a case of
deriving them from the drawing of a rebus." That is to say
that the language is already fragmented, so that its separ­
ate units are used to create image-words, images that are
carriers of a language which they speak and hide at the
same time, in such a way that a second discourse is created.
This discourse forms a fabric where the verbal thread is
already crossed with the chain of the visible. This prodigi­
ous and secret interweaving from which a whole language
and vision emerge is what is being hidden by the process
beneath the narrative of Impressions and Locus Solus. This is
what is revealed by How I Wrote Certain of My Books. In La
Vue, Le Concert, and La Source, this spoken visibility was
already fixed by an anonymous artifice onto a piece of
paper before anyone has either looked or spoken.
It is precisely the glass lens, mounted on the souvenir
pen, that offers the roundness of an infinite landscape. It's
the marvelous instrument for constructing words which
with a basic generosity gives out something that can be
seen: it is a slender piece of white ivory, long and cylindri­
cal, topped with a palette and a faded inscription; and to-
The Surface of Things l l 7

ward the bottom, an ink-stained metal band. A lens hardly

larger than a brilliant dot opens, in the middle of this
instrument manufactured to draw arbitrary signs on
paper, not less distorted than itself, a space of luminous,
patient, simple things. It is the pen of La Vue, and none
other, that will write the works using the process, because
it is the process, or to say it more precisely, its rebus: a
machine to show the reproduction of things, inserted
within an instrument for language.
The network of things and words which produce, like
mushrooms of no known species, the figures of Impressions
and Locus Solus, and which remains obstinately hidden in
these texts, now is naively visible where it was made to be
seen; it is even designated by a flagrant reproduction of
the text which is called, so that no one can mistake it, La
Vue. It is recognizable in this instrument for words, in this
lens of the invisible, in this infinitely chatty landscape; it is
another metier a aubes (work at dawn ) . But this one is even
earlier; it's the process at dawn, with a naive and savage
brightness; the process without any procedure, but so evi­
de n t that it remains invisible. The other, the one a t noon,
has to be well hidden in order to be seen. And perhaps its
own reduplication will cast a shadow on what had never
been veiled.
But one can go further back into the dawn of language
and things: up to that first light seen to shine at the begin­
ning of La Doublure. Even before offering things in their
fullness, this brilliance surreptitiously reduplicates and
opens them from within. This first flash is the one seen to
shine when the actor at the beginning of the text tries in a
solemn and inept manner to place the blade of his sword
back into its sheath:

With a sweeping, exaggerated gesture,

Raising his gloved hand in the air,
1 18 DEATH AND THE LAB Y RINTH
He lowers the blade, which casts a flash,
Then tries to introduce it; but it trembles and fidgets,
His hands cannot make them meet,
The point and the opening of the black leather sheath
Which is turning, both seeming to flee one another.
This small clumsiness, this hitch in a simple gesture tears
open the whole length of the fabric of things. Immediately
there is a split in the spectacle, and the attention of the
spectators is twice as concentrated and yet has shifted:
their eyes do not move from the performance presented
to them, but they recognize that imperceptible division
which makes it a pure and simple spectacle. The assassin
with the rapier is only an actor, his weapon a prop; the
anger is feigned; his solemn gesture has been repeated
a thousand times and shows that it is mere repetition by
this slight shifting which makes it different from every­
thing that has preceded it. But this spectacle, a duplica­
tion by its very nature, is yet even more profoundly a
duplicate: the bad actor is only an understudy who wants
to take the role of the great actor he is replacing. He
only demonstrates his mediocrity as an understudy.
It's within this space opened by the initial flaw in the
duplication that the narrative will come into its full
dimension.
Mter the episode of the clumsy gesture, we pass to
the other side of the curtain, backstage, and then into the
reverse of the life of an actor (the miserable room, the faith­
less mistress: she fell in love with Gaspard on seeing him in
the role of a hoodlum, which he is unable to act out in
reality; but she lets herself be kept by wealthier lovers, for
whom Gaspard again is only a substitute) . The main event
takes place in Nice one afternoon during carnival, at the
parade of masks-these cardboard duplications that Gas­
pard and Roberte watch without participating, both cast­
ing glances at them. But they themselves are reduplicated,
The Surface of Things 1 19

since they are masked spectators. That evening after the

parade they walk the streets strewn with confetti, refusing
to take part in the festivities which are continuing around
them, in order to remain alone. It's the reverse of the
carnival; it's in the quiet night, the dark facet of this noisy
day. Suddenly fireworks explode in the darkness, creating
a sun in the middle of the night and reversing the order of
things. In the last pages Gaspard has become an actor in a
traveling troupe performing at the Neuilly Fair; it's the
last caricature of carnivals and theaters in the poem.
Between the crowd shoving in search of amusement, and
the cardboard flats, he stands there on the wooden plat­
form without curtains, which is nevertheless at that
moment an empty stage-the visible reverse side of a play
that has not yet been performed. It's a duplicate being
reduplicated: no more than a silence, a glance, slow­
motion gestures made in the empty space beneath the
masks.
Gaspard steps forward on the platform and sees
A chair, its legs up,
Lying on the left slightly above the stairs, useless
As straw. He first picks it up by one leg,
Then grabs the back and sets it down at the edge of the
platform, so to speak,
With the back leaning against the railing.
He straddles the seat as if on horseback,
Feeling the back of the chair very flat and straight
Cutting into his arms as he hugs it tightly;
And then again he stars into the emptiness.
Seated on an empty stage-neither as a man nor as an
actor, stripped of all his roles but also separated from
himself-Gaspard is exactly the neutral moment which
separates and unites the duplicate and the duplicated; his
existence defines the black space that lies between the
mask and the face it hides.
1 20 D EATH A N D THE LAB YRINTH
The whole description of the parade (which takes more
than two hundred pages) resides in this minute space
between the two. Apparently Roussel narrates only the
most visible colors and shapes, and the illusions they cre­
ate. But he never fails to point out the slightest flaw
(imperfections, failures, unreal details, exaggerated cari­
catures, wear and tear, flaking plaster, awry wigs, melting
glue, rolled-up sleeves on the dominoes) by which a mask
denounces itself as only a mask, a double whose being is
reduplicated and thus returned to what it is ordinarily.
The cardboard figures depict in a marvelous way what
they mean to say. This huge blue cylinder with its shadows
and reflections could easily be mistaken for the pharma­
cist's phial ( here, as in the lens but in reverse, the lack of
proportion is easily inscribed in the object's existence) ;
this enormous man weaving along with a huge red face,
how not to notice that he's the drunkard? But as he comes
closer it is more discernible that "betwee n the points of his
collar, very far apart, and beneath a prominent Adam's
apple," a small black aperture indicates the place of the
real person and the window of perception. In the same
way it's quickly noticeable that in the pharmacist's phial
one can see:
A very dark rectangular opening
On the label in the middle; it's the hole
That's unsuspected at first from afar, through which
The man enclosed alone can see;
And from the bottom of the bottle to the ground, his lower
legs showed
So that he could direct himself in the crowd.
It's in this necessary opening that the whole ambiguous
nature of the mask is summed up: it enables the masked
person to see (others and the world are no longer masked
for him) and take in the impression made by his mask (in
this way it becomes indirectly visible to his own eyes) . But
The Surface of Things 1 2l
although it enables others to be seen by the mask, because
of it, they see that it's a mask and nothing more. This
tiny opening into which the whole mask can vanish is at
the same time what displays it fully for viewing and the
basis of its real being. It's the flaw which reduplicates the
double and immediately restores it to its marvelous
oneness.
But the play beneath the mask is brought to the surface,
raised to the second degree, and proclaimed by language:
the mimers carry signs which by a strange duplication
announce what is visible to all. "I have a cold" is held
above the head with a red nose that leaves the spectator
without any doubt; in the arms of a white mother a black
baby announces "the newborn accuser. " It's as if the role
of language were, by duplicating what is visible, to make it
evident and thus to show that in order to be seen it needs
to be repeated by language; words alone root the visible in
the concrete. But what confers this power on it, since it is
also painted cardboard of the carnival? Isn 't it analogous
to a mask multiplied by itself and endowed, like the flaw
of vision, with a strange capacity: that of showing the
mask and of duplicating it at the instant it reveals its
simple being. In spite of being brandished above the
masks, like the opening for looking out, language is that
space by which a being and its duplicate are united and
separated; it's a relation of that hidden shadow which
shows things by hiding their being. It's always more or less
a rebus.
The porn offers several examples of this verbal rebus
where words are embodied in things within an inseparable
but ambiguous network. For example, there's an enor­
mous head opening its mouth wide to sing a Marseillaise
that is never heard (one knows it because he carries a sign
with musical notes: "only one sharp" and "several res") . He
walks:
1 22 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
With the bearing of a warrior,
Having only a very thin fringe of hair,
Being immensely bald without appearing old.
He holds out the tricolored flag on which he has written:
"I am bald, humph!" (je suis chauve, hein-0 .
Those without taste for word play will think what they
will of this pun. Whoever has read Roussel can ' t help but
find it remarkable: detail by detail, it has the outline of the
miss with reiter in teeth ( demoiselle a reitre en dents) or of the
whale with island ( baleine a ilot) . It presents the same
duplicate figure of speech within which resides a visible
image produced by the distance between the two words.
But it must be noted here that the two homonyms are
present and understandable, and that the figure is
amphibiological (baldness and chauvinism are clearly
juxtaposed) . It constitutes a rebus with a double meaning;
it's a mask crossing appearance and being, the "seeing"
and the "being s ee n ," the language and the visible. It's
necessary to recognize that this is a small preliminary
model of the process, an entirely visible model, the pro­
cess being this same image with half of it hidden.
Roussel's whole work up to Nouvelles Impressions revolves
around a singular experience (I mean that it must be
stated in the singular) , the link between language and
this nonexistent space which, beneath the surface of
things, separates the internal from the visible face, and
the external from the invisible core. There, between what
is hidden within the evident and what is luminous in
the inaccessible, the task of language is found. It's easy
to understand why Andre Breton and others after him
have seen in Roussel's work an obsession with the
hidden, the invisible, and the withheld. But it's not that
his language wants to conceal anything; it's that from
the beginning to the end of its trajectory it resides
constantly in the hidden duplicate of the visible, and the
The Surface of Things 1 23
visible duplicate of the hidden. Far from making a funda­
mental division between what is divulged and the hidden
meaning, like the occult language of the initiates, Rous­
sel's language shows that the visible and the not visible
repeat each other infinitely, and this duplication of the
same gives language its significance. This is the function it
has the moment it begins among concrete objects, and it
is the reason that things are perceptible only through
language.
But this sweet shadow which beneath the surface and
the mask makes things visible and describable, isn't it
from the moment of birth, the proximity of death, that
death which reduplicates the world like peeling a fruit?
 7
The Empty Lens

A T T H E O P P O S I T E E N D of Roussel's works, outside the

domain of the process that neither La Vue nor La Doublure
was acquainted with, forming beyond Ejur and Locus Solus
a space as enigmatic as that of the early works and, like
them, secret without having any secret, there is Nouvelles
Impressions d 'Afrique. Roussel devoted more time to it than
he spent on the Impressions and Locus Solus, more than was
required by La Vue and La Doublure: he worked on it from
1915 to 1928. However, in How I Wrote Certain of My Books
Roussel invites the reader to make the following calcula­
tion: if, from the 1 3 years and 6 months that extend from
the beginning to the completion of Nouvelles Impressions
d 'Afrique, you subtract the 18 months dedicated to the
plays L 'Etoile au Front and La Poussiere de Soleils, and if from
the remaining 1 2 years you subtract 5 times 365 days for
another parenthesis (absorbed by a preliminary work now
vanished from the oeuvre, having remained in manu­
script) , well, "I can state that it took me seven years to write
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
the version of Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique as the public
finally saw it." The meaning of this arithmetic is not clear:
Is it a question of showing the extent of his labors? Or is it
that due to the timely subtractions we again find the cycle
of seven years which were those of La Doublure and La Vue
( 1 897-1904) , then that of Impressions and Locus Solus
( 1 907-1 914) , the last work thus forming, when the non­
pertinent have been removed, the third period of seven
years which divides ( naturally or by deliberate plan) Rous­
sel's life. Or perhaps he wanted to make known the system
of parentheses in which this work-itself with paren­
theses-encloses others and in turn is contained. It is sym­
metrical with the early texts, framing the works dominated
by the process in a sort of parenthesis that exalts them and
sets them apart. In the same way, the two plays were brack­
eted, as both were written during the intense period of
writing Nouvelles Impressions, but according to a completely
different technique. As for the five years of work which
inaugurated the composition and opened its parentheses,
it has left residual and elliptical signs silent beneath the
text that it caused to be written. The marvel is that this
pattern of parentheses which serves as signs to the Nouvelles
Impressions gives the irreducible remainder of the number
seven. But this should be accepted as Roussel presents it:

Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique was to have contained a

descriptive section. It concerned a charm, a miniature pair
of opera glasses whose two lenses [Stanhopes] , each two
millimeters in diameter and meant to be held up to the
eye, contained photographs on glass depicting the Cairo
bazaars on one lens and the bank of the Nile at Luxor on
the other.
I wrote a verse description of these two photographs. I t
was, in short, a follow-up to my poem La Vue.
This initial work complete, I returned to the beginning to
polish up the verses. But after a certain time I realized that an
The Empty Lens
entire lifetime would be insufficient for such a polishing,
and I abandoned my task. In all it had cost me five years'
labor.

This passage is ambiguous. The pages of How I Wrote

Certain of My Books that pertain to the works of the
process are brief, but luminously succinct. While not tell­
ing everything, they leave nothing obscure: they are
absolutely positive. These are negative-indicating the
Nouvelles Impressions are not constructed according to the
process, that they do not describe a view in a miniature
binocular charm, abandoning five years of work, after
considerable expenditure of labor. It seems as if Roussel
could only speak about the shadow cast by the work, the
part of it obscured by the brilliance of the actually writ­
ten language, its black border. No doubt revealing the
secret of writing which had created Impressions and Locus
Salus shed some light on what remained in the shadow,
but this shadow was an integral part of the language; it
formed the dark core, and to bring it forth was to make
the work speak in its original positivism. For the Nouvelles
Impressions, clarification is, or appears to be, external,
describing the work in terms of what is excluded in
order to define it, opening a parenthesis that remains
empty. It's as if on this last page of his revelation, by a
worrisome and surprising move, Roussel has placed
before our very eyes a pair of glasses whose lenses
remam opaque.
It is true that the construction of the last work is as
obvious as that of the first. It is easy to understand, only
difficult to explain. Here is a group of five alexandrines:

Rasant le Nil, je vois fuir deux rives couvertes

De fleurs, d 'ailes, d 'eclairs, de riches plantes vertes
Dont une suffirait a vingt de nos salons
D 'opaques frondaisons, defruits et de rayons.
 DEATH A N D T H E LAB YR I N T H
Skimming the Nile, I see two shores passing covered
With flowers, wings, flashes of lighting, luxurious green plants
One of which would suffice for twenty of our drawing rooms
Of opaque fronds, fruits, and sunbeams.
After these twenty drawing rooms (all decorated with the
foliage of one plant) , let's open a parenthesis (reason
doesn't matter for the moment, and let's not say too
quickly that there will be an explanation, a clarification) :
. . . a vingt de nos salons
(Doux salons ou sitt5t qu 'ont toume les talons
Sur celui qui s 'eloigne on fair courir maints bruits)
D 'opaquefrondaisons, de rayons et defruits.
. . . in twenty of our drawing rooms
(Sweet drawing rooms where as soon as one turns on one's
heels
Different rumors are spread about the person leaving)
Of opaque fronds, sunbeams, and fruits.
A happy transposition in the last syllable restores a positive
rhyme. On the trail of these heels, another parenthesis is
opened:
(Doux salons ou sitt5t qu 'ont toume deux talons
((En se divertissant soit de sa couardise
Soit de ses fins talents, quoi qu 'ilfasse ou qu 'il dise))
Sur celui qui s 'eloigne on fait courir maints bruits)
D 'opaques frondaisons, de rayons et defruits.
(Sweet drawing rooms where as soon as one turns on one's
heels
( (By making fun either of his cowardice
Or of his subtle talents, no matter what he does or says) )
About the one who leaves, rumors are spread)
Of opaque fronds, sunbeams, and fruits.
And there's a continuing elaboration within the text:
(Doux salons ou sitot qu 'ont tourne deux talons
((En se divertissant soit de sa couardise
The Empty Lens 1 29
(((Force particuliers quoi qu 'on leurJasse ou dise
jugeant le talion d'un emploi peu prudent
Rendent salut pour oeil et sourire pour dent))) . . .
(Sweet drawing rooms where as soon as one turns on one's
heels
( (By making fun of either his cowardice
( ( (Particularly strong whatever one does or says to them
Judging the punishment of an unwise action
Returning a greeting for an eye and a smile for a tooth) ) ) . . .

At any rate, the poem concludes with the opaque fronds,

the sunbeams, the fruits, which along with the wings, the
flashes of lightning, the flowers and plants form the spec­
tacle (beyond the forest of concentric parentheses) , the
visible border of the poem. The thickening can increase
up to the fifth degree: five parentheses enclosing a lan­
guage said to be of the fifth degree, the original sentence
being degree zero.
But there are lateral forms of branching out: within
parentheses of four degrees can be juxtaposed two bud­
ding developments of the fifth degree-two, three, or
even more. Similarly, the third degree can carry several
quadruple systems; the second, several triple systems, etc.
The dashes must be included, a type of timid parenthesis,
barely formed and still horizontal, with the alternating or
simultaneous function of creating a feeble juncture or a
break. Now they unite analogous terms enumerated, now
they indicate a discrete incisiveness (acting as a half
measure of containment) , to evoke, for example:
. . . Une eau-poison dont rien ne sauve
Le microbe sournois charge de rendre chauve­
Capable d 'affamer les vendeurs de cheveux.
. . . A liquid-poison that nothing can save
From the cunning microbe responsible for creating baldness­
Able to bring out the greed of the hair vendors.
 D EATH A N D THE LABYRINTH
Finally, at the bottom of the page, as if at the roots of
the text, there's a profuse branching out of notes, often
very long: the fourth part of Nouvelles Impressions has only
ninety-five verses of text, but one hundred thirty-four
verses of notes. These are in alexandrines and arranged in
such a way that as long as the reader reads them scrupu­
lously in the indicated order, he will find a regular
sequence of rhymes (the first verse of the note rhyming
with the verse of the text to which it is appended, if it
doesn 't also rhyme with the preceding verse; and if the last
verse of the note is suspended, it will rhyme with the first
of the text in the order where it returns) . It happens that a
note will interrupt an alexandrine: the first words will
complete the line, the transition to the note being noth­
ing more than a stressed caesura. As for the note, it grows
in a vegetal system similar to that of the text, slightly less
vigorously, however, since it never surpasses the system of
triple parentheses.
Thus the note on page 209 of Nouvelles Impressions,
which begins proudly with the verse:
Nul n 'est sans caresser un rive ambitieux
There is no one who has not caressed some ambitious dream
originates in a passage of text already fortified by four par­
entheses and one dash (it's four and a half degrees) ; its
own development forms a system of three envelopes and
one dash (four and a half degrees since the note itself is
one degree) . Thus the heart of the verbal labyrinth is
reached, guided by the straight line of verse and rhyme to
the ninth degree of envelopment-the supreme degree
never reached in any other summit of Nouvelles Impressions.
In this eminent position of words, so protected in its
restraint, so exalted by the pyramidal stratification of the
levels oflanguage, at once at the deepest and at the highest
of this tower which is being dug like the shaft of a mine, a
The Empty Lens
lesson can be formulated which is essential to understand
after an itinerary which has crossed so many thresholds, so
many openings and closings, so many broken discourses,
right up to the issue of speech and silence:
De se taire parfois riche est ['occasion.
There are sometimes rich opportunities for remaining silent.
And if there is no tenth degree in this development of
language which grows by backing toward the center, it is
perhaps the opportunity seized and kept to remain
silent-an opportunity as rich as a treasure and, like it,
inaccessible.
I know that people won't fail to point out to me, and
against me, the nine walls to surmount, the nine forms of
test, the nine years of waiting, the nine stages of know­
ledge, the nine doors locked, then unlocked. What do
they lead to if not to an initiatory secret, to the promised
and reserved moment of illumination? By method and
conviction I remain with the structure, noting only that
according to the laws of harmony ( that Roussel knew) a
n i n th c hord cannot rise highe r, a n d knowing that this
form of the ninth can be found elsewhere in Roussel's
work, giving his language not a theme but a number and a
space from which he speaks.

For the moment let's admire another enigma. Roussel

has calculated that on the average he worked for fifteen
hours on each verse of Nouvelles Impressions. That's not
difficult to understand when you take into account that
every new ring of growth in the wood of the poem requires
a reordering of the whole, the system only finding its bal­
ance once the center of this circular vegetation, where the
most recent is also the most internal, has been finalized.
With each additional increase this internal development
couldn' t fail to overwhelm the language it enriched. The
 DEATH AND T H E LAB YR I N T H
invention of each verse was the destruction of the whole
and stipulated its reconstruction.
Nothing is more difficult than to reduce this ever­
circling turbulence, when compared to La Vue, where lan­
guage had the task of faithfully following the contour of
things, and by successive touches to refine the meticu­
lousness of their details. As arduous as may be this patient
and faithful reconstruction, what does it have in common
with the permanent self-destruction of the language?
Which is the most inexhaustible of these two forms of
labor: to describe something or to construct a discourse in
which each word that is created abolishes what went
before? And yet Roussel chose the latter, finding himself
incapable of finishing the first, whose completion-he
believed after five years of work-would have indubitably
required "a whole lifetime" and more. Strange that he
should fail to accomplish again, twelve years later, what he
had done wi thout any appar en t difficulty in La Vue, Le
Concert, and La Source. It's all the more strange since the
new work was less concerned with descriptions and the
relationship of words to things, which is difficult in itself,
than with "the polishing of the verses. " The indefatigable
measured alexandrines of La Vue had demonstrated, how­
ever, that Roussel easily launched "minimal barks of no
importance," others animated "with motions seeming
special and varied." He had no scruples about having men
stroll along whose "extreme discouragement was com­
plete" (the reason for leaning against "the parapet") ; and
finally from measure to measure in La Vue he had spread
the most economical, the most indispensable language,
equally the most "successful" on
Le souvenir vivace et latent d 'un ete
Dija loin de moi, dija mort, vile emporte.
The latent vivid memory of a summer
Already far from me, already dead, quickly vanished.
The Empty Lens 1 33

Why then this sudden opening of an impenetrable bar­

rier between description and poetry, and perhaps between
poetry and prose? Why sever the bond between two forms
of language which are, as if in the wake of an internal
collapse, separated by the emptiness of a time which a
whole lifetime could not succeed in filling? And why did
he choose between these two irreconcilable extremes the
complication described above of parentheses and verses,
to leave quietly, at the bottom of the text, without its ever
appearing, the description which created it?
Another question: why is this text called, so notably,
Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique, presenting itself in this way
as a repetition of a work with which it seems to have little
rapport, and even less since it was not constructed, as the
other was, according to the process? I don't think that the
fleeting but all-encompassing descriptions of Damietta, of
Bonaparte, of the gardens at Rosetta, nor even of the
licked column in the temple of Aboul-Maateh justifies a
title which relates more to Mrica than to the incompar­
able skills of Ejur-on-the-Tez. What is the enigmatic bond
linking the Nouvelles Impressions, the old ones (whose
renewal the title proclaims but without any explanation ) ,
and La Vue (which was the basis of a first draft which
remained secret, and whose existence was revealed only by
Roussel himself) ? The Nouvelles Impressions give the dis­
tinct impression of repeating the coronation of Talou and
the sunny seashore embedded in the iridescent mother-of­
pearl pen, but in a style that remained mysterious, which
neither the text nor How I Wrote Certain of My Books
explains directly. How to explain away the difficulty of
this repetition whose discourse must cover such a great
distance: the one separating the construction of machines
for secretly repeating words (while triumphing over time)
and the meticulous description of a world (invisibly
visible) where space is abolished?
1 34 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y RI NT H
The four cantos of Nouvelles Impressions are framed along
the periphery by thin rings that are visible. The doorway
of the house in which Saint Louis was imprisoned opens
the first canot which closes on "the old cathedrals," "the
original cromlech," and "the dolmen beneath which the
ground is always dry." A column licked by yellow tongues
marks the threshold of the third canto. We already know
between which shores, which wings, which palms in which
drawing rooms, flows the last canot. The luminous crown
of the second is like an image of the whole work: Bona­
parte's little black hat is bursting like a darkened, eclipsed
sun, with rays whose glory obscures Egypt, "her evenings,
her firmament." In the same way the parenthesis that
opens immediately with the first verses eclipses like a black
disk the scene shown in the lens of the binoculars, leaving
only a luminous corolla around the poem-which holds
the eye by showing the flight of birds, the silhouette of a
column against the sky, and the sky at twilight. La Vue was
constructed along the exact opposite model: at the center
the even lighting revealed things without any hesitation or
shadow; all around-before and after this luminous dis­
play-was a circle of haze: the eye looked through the lens
and placed in the shadows anything that was not part of
the spectacle. At first everything was gray, but like a signal
carrying its own source of light, the glance pierced the
glass lens, and the backdrop came sharply into focus; the
circle of white sand beach was as brilliant as the sun. Per­
haps at the end the patient hand had trembled: "The bright­
ness dims within the glass and everything darkens." In the
Nouvelles Impressions, the sun is on the outside and circles
the edge of the central darkness. In La Vue the shadows
part like a curtain to let the light originate from its center.
In La Vue the absence of perspective increased the effect
of a homogeneous light, creating small areas of equal
brightness, whereas the eclipse of Nouvelles Impressions is
The Empty Lens 1 35
made darker by the opposite effect of a perspective that's
extremely sharp and deep: the opening of successive par­
entheses around a vanishing point which seems inaccess­
ible. Starting from the foreground, each break suddenly
forces the glance to pass to a more distant level, some­
times deep within the space, until the sentence forming
the horizon line is finally brought back by the identical
number of degrees to the right side of the picture, where
for an instant can be found again the clarity of the begin­
ning, which had quickly illuminated the thin portico from
the left. This flight of the text toward a distant center is
accentuated at every step by the construction of the sen­
tences. They were smooth and horizontal in La Vue; they
flowed according to a plan that exactly paralleled the
spectacle and the movement of the eye that scanned it;
their pace without ellipsis or abbreviation only had the
task of uniting with the greatest verbal economy the least
visible of the visible images. It was a matter of stitching
things down with words of the greatest precision in a ges­
ture where readiness is joined to caution, haste to an
apparent ease, the straight thread with the sinuous line­
rather similar to the motion of the seamstress described by
sentences which follow the same curve as she makes:

. . . A thimble
Shines on her finger; with the edge of her thumb
She pushes it with gentle pressure and raises it slightly,
Only to let in fresh air, invigorating, pure.
The needle she holds at the same time draws
Across her work its fine , appreciable shadow
Flowing over the sides; the very short thread
Can't last longer, it risks
A sudden ending; for it to be pulled out
Of the needle, the least tug would be too much;
The work is of good, delicate material,
The thread comes from a soft hem nearing the end;
 D EATH A N D THE LABYRINTH
The material wrinkles, it's pliable and supple,
Frequently handled . . . .

The sentences of Nouvelles Impressions are constructed

very differently, their syntax following the outline of the
process of envelopment, in which they are trapped and
often isolated-thus they are formed as minuscule models
of the whole text. For example, this is the question that
has to be asked when two common ivory billiard balls,
striking each other, animate a billiard cue (what Roussel
called "the triggering process") :

. . . Pourquoifiere Ia bille
Point neJraie avec lui qui de rouge s 'habille.
. . . Why the proud ball
Does not click against the one clad in red.

The enveloping question shows with what care the mean­

ing and the things are covered in the simultaneously ellip­
tical and metaphorical language in which they are proudly
outfitted, like the ball in red. Objects are not presented
for what they are and where they are located, but rather
described in their most extreme superficiality by a distant
anecdotal detail that designates them offhandedly, leaving
them within a gray parenthesis that is reached through a
labyrinthian detour, but from whence they never emerge
again by themselves. The soap offers its slippery body (it
must be remembered that Fogar demonstrated with such
skill its original properties, its simple forms, and its being
that is elusive and docile at the same time) only in two
forms-one is metonymic: "what helped clean him made
the bath flow," the other metaphorical: "what was heated
according to an order that was heard." Talou's black sub­
ject seen gamboling, all feathers deployed, around the in­
comparable prisoners, now suddenly becomes a "feathered
rooster of the human proprietors of the ark." Paradise be-
The Empty Lens 1 37
comes "a high, well-lodged flowery sojourn, making
melodious choristers," unless it's preferable to encounter
a "smelly top tier of boxes at the theater." Thus the desig­
nation of things is scattered to their periphery, simply let­
ting loose a luminous and enigmatic ring circling around a
black disk which hides the simple being with the direct
word. Language has become circular and all-encompassing;
it hastily crosses distant perimeters, but it is always drawn
by a dark center, never identified, always elusive-a per­
spective extended to infinity in the hollow of words, just as
the perspective of the whole poem opens to the horizon at
the very center of the text.
Since La Vue the configuration oflanguage has changed.
It was a linear language which spread slowly beyond itself,
carrying, in a regular flow, things to be seen. Now language
is arranged in a circle within itself, hiding what it has to
show, flowing at a dizzying speed toward an invisible void
where things are beyond reach and where it disappears in
its mad pursuit of them. It measures the infinite distance
between the eye and what is seen. The gracefulness of the
language in La Vuewas that it gave the minuscule, the hazy,
the lost, the poorly placed, the almost imperceptible (and
even the most secret thought) with the same clarity as the
visible. The burden of the irregular, circular, elliptical lan­
guage of Nouvelles Impressions is the inability to rejoin even
those things that are the most evident. Despite the unbeliev­
able speed it has acquired in the characterization of things,
the beauty of it is that the ever-increasing acceleration of
this ontological flow sometimes throws out along its path
strange sparks as vivid as "the ignorant arrow with a sublu­
nar path," as bristling and erect as "the rooster who, flee­
ing autumn, stamped with rage at the late dawn," as gra­
cious and thoughtful as that offered to a young woman
worker who "bites her finger, holding a rose," and shining
with a light so fantastic that by its brightness one could
 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH
mistake "a group of proud, caparisoned, rearing horses
for a horde of aimless sea horses." All these rapid gleams
fall in broken fragments, dark, enigmatic at the end of
each canto, crowded one against the other like the voices
of a fugue at the moment of stress:
De mere sur la plaque elle se change en soeur))
L 'avis roulant sur l 'art de mouvoir l 'ascenseur)
-Racines, troncs, rameaux, branches collaterales­
L 'etat de ses ai'eux, les frustes cathidrales . . .
She changes herself from mother to sister on the plaque) )
The notice pertaining to the art of running the elevator)
-Roots, trunks, boughs, collateral branches-
The state of his forefathers, the old cathedrals . . .

In terms of this race within its own space (which it hollows

out and toward which it is vertiginously drawn) , the lan­
guage returns to the solid surface of things that it can cross
once again, as in La Vue, following the current enumer­
ations: the menhirs, the original cromlech, Egypt, its sun, its
evenings, its firmament, the opaque fronds, its sunbeams,
and its fruits. But this grace recaptured can only last
an instant: it is the threshold-opened and closed as you
will-starting from which is silenced a language which had
spoken in the vain attempt to eliminate its distance from
things.
In La Vue, Le Concert, and La Source the poetic foundation
is a domain where a being is complete, visible, and calm.
The scene presented may be the most illusory imaginable
(the minuscule picture invisibly framed, the pure conven­
tionality of an advertising vignette without any equivalent
in reality) . What it opens up is the dominion of a being
completely frozen at the heart of its apparent animation;
the movements are set apart from time, freed from it, and
fixed beneath its flux. The crest of the wave swells without
ever crashing in the tension of its breaking into foam; a
The Empty Lens 1 39
stick takes flight from a throwing gesture and will never
fall; and the ball, "fully inflated, bouncing and bright,"
laughs like a leather sun above extended arms which have
already thrown it up and never will catch it again. The
appearance of motion is caught in stone, but this
immobility, this stone suddenly raised, forms a threshold
through which language has access to the secret of being.
Hence the privileged position Roussel always conferred
on the verb etre ( to be)-the most neutral of verbs, but the
closest to the common root of language and things ( their
bond perhaps, their common ground) : "Everything is
deserted and empty . . . ; after, it is a mound of large boul­
ders . . . ; they are full of strange things, grouped in start­
ling disorder; this entire strange section of the shore is
primitive, virginal, unknown, and wild." And thanks to the
marvelous power of the verb etre the language of La Vue is
maintained at the level of a descriptive epidermis straited
with properties and epithets, but as close as possible to the
being which becomes perceptible through it.
By contrast, the Nouvelles Impressions are characterized
by a surprising rarefaction of the verbs; there are listings
of nearly twenty pages where (aside from the relatives with
their function as epithets) no verbs in a personal mode are
to be found. There seems to be a succession of things in a
void where they are suspended between a forgotten sup­
port and a shore not yet sighted. At every moment words
are created from an absence of being, coming forth one
against the other, alone, higgledy-piggledy, or by antitheti­
cal couples, or by pairs with analogous forms, or grouped
according to incongruous similarities, illusory resem­
blances, series of the same species, etc. Instead of the state
of being which in La Vue gave each thing its ontological
weight, now only systems of analogies and opposites,
resemblances and dissimilarities are to be found, where
being is made volatile, becomes sketchy, and ends by dis-
1 40 DEATH A N D THE LA B Y R I N T H
appearing. The play of identity and of differences-which
is also that of repetition (a repetition which is repeated
in turn during the interminable lists Roussel places
within his poems)-has eclipsed the lucid procession of
beings throughout La Vue. The black disk invariably masks
whatever there was to see in the four cantos of Nouvelles
Impressions, and allows at the edge of each one only a thin,
luminous ribbon. No doubt it is like a dark machine for
creating repetition and thus the hollowing out of a void
where being is swallowed up, where words hurl themselves
in pursuit of objects, and where language endlessly
crashes down into this central void.
Perhaps that is the reason why it was no longer possible
to rewrite La Vue, to line up in horizontal and parallel
verses a description of things that had lost the unchanging
domicile of being and were excluded: the language escaped
from within. It was to this flight and against this flight that
Roussel had to address himself, casting verses into the void
and not toward objects (now also lost with being) but in the
pursuit of language, to construct a dam against this open­
ing-at once a barred threshold and a new opening. Hence
this gigantic effort, the last one made by Roussel, to make
alexandrine verse out of a language that a central cavity
twisted from within and sent toward this void. If Roussel
had spent twelve years of his life to write fifty-nine pages
(half as much as La Vue and the same as Le Concert) , it's not
that he needed all that time, indefatigable versifier that he
was, to rearrange his rhymes with each new parenthesis, but
rather, it was necessary at every moment to uphold his poeti­
cal language, inclined to turn inward toward the void, re­
calling the failure of a Nouvelle Vue (as admitted by Rous­
sel ) , whose existence is now brought to mind. If by placing
his eye to the lens of the binocular charm Roussel could
not see things arranged of their own accord into alexan­
drine verses, if the lens was opaque, then there was an onto-
The Empt_v Lens
logical failure which the repetitions of the Nouvelles Impres­
sions mask and yet exalt at the same time.
But this is exactly where the Nouvelles Impressions repeat
the old Impressions.

Talou' s prisoners sought their freedom by constructing a

world that was duplicated by its faithful imitation and made
fantastic by the means used to accomplish the exactness of
the copy. Each large tableau on the stage of the Incompar­
ables was a sumptuous way of"returning to the same thing,"
and thus escaping the rule, playful, arbitrary, and cruel, in
which the king of Ejur held his victims enslaved. There can
be found imprisoned in the peripheral sentences of the
Nouvelles Impressions motionless passages, or rather pas­
sages whose only movement is to pass from the same to the
same. And just as Talou's white victims were granted their
liberty and life by their marvelous duplication of the iden­
tical, the long chant of the same, then in the Nouvelles
Impressions this is resolved as a return to the uniqueness of
things which are seen and alive. The enumerations func­
ti on as the machines and as the stage settings did in the
other texts, but according to another plan: this vertiginous
enumeration accumulates without stop in order to achieve
a result which was already a given at the beginning but
which seems to recede with each repetition.
The parentheses of the text contain vast thresholds
through which parade the lines of analogous individuals
or objects which have one aspect in common among them­
selves, which each in turn would show: 45 examples of
things ( or people) which become smaller; 54 of questions
which it is difficult to answer; 7 signs which are not mislead­
ing when information is needed about a person, his char­
acter, his race, his medical record, or his social standing.
These areas of analogy (what Jean Ferry quite correctly
called the series) form a major part of the text: hardly one
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
twentieth of the second canto escapes it, a few light steps
are drawn leading to it. At first glance, the choice of these
areas, where, pell-mell, disembark a whole carnival of
incongruities, is in itself disconcerting. Why is it that on
the subject of Saint Louis' house at Damietta, in addition
to 54 questions without answer, are enumerated 22 objects
that are useless to list as an overcoat for a native of Nice,
and 13 props with which vain people want to adorn them­
selves when having their photographs taken (like the
pseudo-traveler and an Eskimo parka) ? In fact, despite the
interruption of the parenthesis and the constant elusive­
ness of the principal proposition-through them, and no
doubt due to them-the Nouvelles Impressions are struc­
tured with the pomposity, the obvious coherence, of a
didactic treatise, a treatise on identity.

I. The first canto begins at the threshold of a door, by

evoking things from the past which become present again
scarcely separated from their former selves by the divider
of a yesterday. Their identity is at the same time divided
and rejoined by time: witness the great names of history.
The canto of the identity approximates itself, but only
affirms its imminent simplicity when its being is already
lost in the distance.

a. First category (54 items) : Even with the most

immediate things, can one be sure whether they are this or
that, useful or harmful, real or fake? Can he know "remain­
ing alone, Horace, at what speed to flee"? Would the young
writer know "until when his work would be published at
his own expense" (in fact, Roussel never knew) ? It is
confused identity, the equation of contradictions, the
secret of the future and of the present itself (Does the
drunkard know "whether or not the bottles of Cliquot are
waltzing"? ) .
The Empty Lens 1 43
b. Second category (22 items in footnotes) : There are
inversely things of different nature that come to rejoin
one another to form a quasi-identity in which they repeat
and nullify one another even though they appear contra­
dictory. Does one pay when "for his payment he gets the
hair curlers ready in the dark"? "When a lecturer intro­
duces, to whoever is listening, a narcotic"? It's the recipro­
cal negation of things which in spite of their difference
repeat each other.

c. Third category ( 1 3 items) : When he is being

photographed, the man tries to consolidate his identity by
using unmistakable symbols in the hope that it will not
escape him: the millionaire poses in front of the camera
with her cabochon diamonds, the dry jockey (since he has
not raced) "under his ample jacket of thin material with
big dots." Each one in turn only reveals his mocking iden­
tity: an evident hollowness, a lie.

On the subject of names preserved by history, and of

poses that have remained famous for posterity, let's con­
sider Bonaparte with his hat, before the forty centuries of
the pyramids. And thus:

II. The second canto. Its subject is change: modula­

tion and permanence of forms, mutability in time, the
shock of contradiction; but despite so much diversity,
things obscurely remain the same.

a. First category (5 items) : How many different

obj ects can reproduce the form of a cross with extremely
diverse significance?

b. Second category ( 40 items) : How many things change

proportion and are reduced in scale while remaining the
 D EATH A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
same (from "the asparagus that's cast off after one bite" up
to "having been on point, this gaudy ballerina") ?

c . Third category (206 items) : Among things of dif­

ferent sizes (a needle and a lightning rod; a fried egg and
the pate of a tonsured monk ill with jaundice) , there are
similarities of form that could deceive a bewitched eye.
Jean Ferry has explained admirably this enormous series,
often extremely enigmatic.

d. Fourth category (28 items) : Such contradictions in

the life of the same person or the fate of the same objects
(the glory Columbus conferred on the "anonymous"
egg) .

e. Fifth category (28 items) : The sole idea of certain

things is by nature contradictory (for example, the idea
that "No one knew how to equal Onan by passing before
all else the law of the giver giving") .

f. Sixth category (2 items) : A certain success is spoiled

at the core by coming from a source that contradicts it.

Such contradictions can easily be found in the conduct

and beliefs of mankind, which leads us naturally to the
base of the superstitious column of

III. The third canto, "the column which, licked until

the tongue bleeds, cures jaundice." This canto, as its title
has already indicated, is consecrated to the relationship of
things:

a. First category (9 items) : Things that compensate

for each other ( the tightrope and the balancing pole) .
The Empty Lens 1 45
b. Second category (8 items) : Things that favor one
another (the hand in the emperor's vest and the idea in
his head) .

c. Third category ( 6 items) : The things that are made

for each other, like the shepherd for the flock, the wax for
the mustache.

d. Fourth category (9 items in footnotes) : One thing

indicates another, the way the frequenter of bars is betrayed
"by the neatness of his strong horizontal jet [of urine ] . "

e. Fifth category ( 6 items) : The real united with the

false (an author can publish impressions of Mrica "with­
out having gone further than Asnieres," which was not the
case for Roussel, as we know) .

f. Sixth category ( 6 items in footnotes) : There are

things which are unique and do not present analogies
(for example, "the gold certain rams had in their fleece") .

g. Seventh category ( 4 items) : It is also restrictive

compared to the first five; as in the case of belladonna,
which is not useful when one has a glass eye, there are
things which it is useless to bring together.

Thus things are sometimes unique, sometimes double,

sometimes linked together, and sometimes solitary, dis­
covering their identity and their essence often within and
at times outside of themselves. They are separated from
themselves and similar to themselves as are the two shores
of the Nile.

IV. In Canto IV a slow barge divides the symmetrical

unity of the gardens at Rosetta like a fruit cut open. There
 D E AT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
things are seen to be unique and yet similar to one
another, ever different, but so close are the two shores of
the river that when seen from above in the mirroring sur­
face of the water, they appear like one another's reflec­
tion. But what is this barge which links these immobile
and silent forms to its own motion and silently divides the
two identical shores? What is it if not language? The first
three cantos sing of the conflict and alliance of things; the
fourth, the snare and diversion of words, the strange stars
that outline and create fictitious but unsurpassable uni­
ties. How can the identical be found if it is quartered by
language which toys with it and proposes another iden­
tity-the only one perhaps to which we have access? It's
the song of the constellation of language. (This is my
hypothesis: I cannot rid myself of the idea, entirely wrong
perhaps, that the gardens at Rosetta are the site where
formerly was discovered the Rosetta stone with hiero­
glyphics, which carried one message repeated in three
languages. The river on which Roussel's barge moves for­
ward is the antithesis of this solid block: on that stone
three words meant the same thing; in the flow of language
Roussel makes words sparkle, each of which by itself has
many meanings.)

a. First category ( 6 items) , se faire a ( to adapt to) :

Shorn, the sheep becomes accustomed to the cold; on its
perch the parrot adjusts to its chain.

b. Second category ( 1 5 items) , s 'eteindre (to extin­

guish) : Ardors, fevers, desires, flames (even the one on
the coward's backside) .

c. Third category (3 items in footnotes) , progresser ( to

advance or progress) : The progress made by cannons over
"awkward catapults"; horses, locomotives (the quarreling
of sparrows) .
The Empty Lens
d. Fourth category ( 8 items in footnotes) , se faire
attendre (to make people wait) : The bridegroom when one
is a girl without a dowry; the hollow plop of a pebble
dropped into a well.

e. Fifth category (8 items in footnotes) , avoir un but ( to

have a goal) : A confused series, nonlinear, interrupted.
What is certain is that "the slut set her sights on a coach"
and a young priest, on purple robes (in truth the oyster
in its travail is not aiming at the dickey of the elegant
man) .

It's in the paragraph dedicated to "goals" that Roussel's

language attains its highest degree of envelopment, and
within the ninth parenthesis he takes the opportunity to
speak of silence, as if that were the goal of the whole dis­
course, the minute black period aimed at in the midst of
all these multicolored concentric circles; as if so many
hard shells had been needed to protect and finally to dis­
play with this tender core of silence the "rich opportunity
for remaining silent."

f. Sixth category(20 items in footnotes) : A list of

words with double meanings, such as pate, "tears of an
assortment of feathers" or a "tra-la-la timbal for robust
gasters"; champignon, "suspicious food" or "chic support."

It is futile to insist on the extraordinary importance of

this enumeration. Without any detours it leads to the first
pages of How I Wrote Certain of My Books and to Roussel's
revelation of the process. That is to say, it secretly leads to
the first version of Impressions, for which it gives the key
without ever stating it. It must be noted that none of the
examples given in this passage is mentioned in the post­
humous text (except "blanc [white ] " used several times by
Roussel in both meanings, explicitly announced: "the
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
chalking of a billiard cue" and "civilized" ) ; but it's easy to
recognize in which texts the words mentioned here have
played out their double meaning: clou (nail) and baton
(stick) in two of his early works; se repentir ( to repent) in
Nanon; eclair (lightning) perhaps served to strike Djizme;
revolution spun around a whole litter of kittens caught in
the tentacles of a hysterical octopus (revolving kittens) ; la
suite (of pages) organized Talou's parade; the savon (soap)
served Fogar's skillful tricks; the echo caused Stephane
Alcott's bone-thin family to sing in unison, like the
"echoes" one reads about in the "scandal sheets."
There's no doubt about it: the process had already been
revealed when Roussel made his posthumous revelation.
It was a long meandering through numerous identities
and differences leading to this form which for Roussel was
supreme, where the identity of things was definitely lost in
the ambiguity of language; but this form, when dealing
with the concerted repetition of words, has the power of
creating a whole world of things never seen, impossible,
unique. Nouvelles Impressions is the repeated birth of the old
one-the theoretical and didactic summation of things
and of words which necessarily leads to the creation of his
earlier work. It is Nouvelles Impressions because, being
younger than the first, it tells of its birth.

g. Finally, isn't the last category futile, after the two

preceding ones? The subject is seven animals whose qual­
ities have not turned egotistical: a ram that is not proud of
becoming a goatskin. The reason is that the animals neither
resemble words that have been quoted nor the vain people
who were the subject of the first canto, which opened
beneath the language an ocean of lost identity. Essentially,
this ultimate category is not superfluous: at the moment
the discourse leads us to the supreme surfeit and to the
supreme source, there, at the bottom of the page, was to be
The Empty Lens
found the thin, unexpected reassurance (or vertigo) of
pure conscience lulled asleep, and guardian animals who
without presumption maintain their paradisiacal iden­
tities, long after we have crossed and divided by our barge
and our language the identical shores, the opaque fronds,
the sunbeams, and the fruits.
This is the demonstrable coherence of this treatise: iden­
tity pursued, in things, forms, animals, and men, followed
through resemblances across measure and immoderation,
sought after at all levels of being, without concern for dig­
nity, hierarchy or nature, displayed in composite figures,
lost in others more simple, everywhere coming into being
and fleeing in every direction. It's a cosmology of the same.
It's a gigantic Noah's Ark (but even more welcoming) ,
which takes in couples not to multiply the species but to
pair off the most incongruous things in the world so that
born from these figures in repose are unique monsters in­
separable from identity. It's Genesis in reverse, which seeks
to return to the dispersal of beings. Its interminable enu­
merations form horizontal dynasties, instantly dispossessed,
where the most unexpected conjunctions attempt to rein­
state the sovereignty of the same. As a result of objective
irony it's only the repetition of these failed attempts which
creates the hollow form of the identical, never assignable
to a specific thing. It's as iflanguage alone in its fundamen­
tal capacity for repeating and of being repeated could con­
tribute what being had withdrawn, and could only give it
while in full pursuit, going without pause from one to the
other. What had been seen in La Vue (things as immobile as
statues) is now only the meteoric passage, the invisible
leap, the never-ceasing lacunae of being between this one
and that one. Even when this language to which the last
canto is dedicated states one thing, it could as well, with the
same words, mean something else. This creates the final
irony, that the very location and possibility of repetition, by
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
repeating itself, does not remain identical to itself. Now
where can the treasure of identity be found if not in the
mute modesty of animals or in that which is beyond the
ninth level of language-in silence, unless it is used sys­
tematically to create a marvelous, unique language, the
capacity to say two things with the same words. These are
the three possibilities opened by the language of the last
canto of Nouvelles Impressions.
Nouvelles Impressions is a type of dictionary devoted to the
rhyme of things: a treasury of what can be gathered
together according to the rules of an ontological versifica­
tion in order to write the poetry of their being. The sub­
j ect, as in the early works, is an exploration of the empty
and moving space where words slide over things. But in
the narratives of repeated sentences, the ambiguity of
words was methodically extended in order to bring out in
a pure state, as the birthplace of the imaginary, the "tropo­
logical" dimension. This is now revealed as crawling with
things and words which call to each other, clash with, are
superimposed on, escape from, are confused with, or
exorcised by one another. It's as if the glass lens, empty
when it comes to revealing the harmonious order of vis­
ible things and language, had now become fecund with all
these gray shapes, invisible, fleeing, where words cease­
lessly play between the meaning and the image. Nouvelles
Impressions thus returns to the classical treatise on gram­
mar and rhetoric. It is an enormous anthology of the
"tropological" figures of the language: "Every time there is
a difference in the natural relationship which gives rise to
a borrowed meaning, it can be said that the expression
which is based upon this relationship belongs to a specific
trope." Such is the definition of "trope" that Dumarsais
formerly gave; it could as well be the definition of all the
figures that march by in Roussel's interminable series.
This "treatise oflost identity" can be read as a treatise on
The Empty Lens
all the marvelous torsions of the language: a reserve of anti­
phrases (Canto I, Series a) , of pleonasm < b) , of antono­
masia < c) , of allegory (II, a) , oflitotes (II, b) , of hyperbole
(II, c) , of metonymy (all of Canto III) , of catachresis and
metaphor in Canto IV. As proof I will only consider the
note in Canto IV which enumerates the words with double
meaning so important for the genesis of the whole work:
£'clair dit: feu du ciel escorte defracas
Ou: reflet qu 'un caniffait jaillir de sa lame.
Lightning is said to be: fire from heaven accompanied by
noise
Or: the flash made by the blade of a pocketknife.
Now this is what can be read in the chapter on homo­
graphs in Homonymous Verses by Freville:*
-De qui sort du cornet m 'enrichit ou me ruine
De pour coudre sied bien au doight mignon d'Aline
-Jalousie est un vice, helas, des plus honteux
-Jalousie au balcon deplait aux curieux.
-Oeillet petit trou rond sert pour mettre un lacet
Oeillet avec la rose arrondit mon bouquet
- Vers charmants de Virgile, ils peignent la nature.
Vers rongeurs, tout helas devient votre piiture.
-Dice which come from the shaker bring one wealth or
rum
Thimble for sewing fits on Aline's pretty finger
-Jealousy is, alas, one of the most shameful vices
Shutters on the balcony offend the curious.
-Eyelet is a small round hole for placing a lace
Carnation with roses fills out my bouquet
-Verses so charming by Virgil portray nature.
Worms, devourers, everything alas becomes your pasture.
All these examples can be found in the works of Roussel; I
even notice that the flying pile driver from Locus Solus was

*Freville, Les Vers Homonymes Suivis des Homographs (Paris, 1 804) .

15 2 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
already present in Freville, with the dual meaning of
demoiselle, to which is added that of "dragonfly" (hence,
perhaps, the gyrating wings on the paving instrument
invented by Martial Canterel) :
-Demoiselle se dit d 'un insecte a quatre ailes;
Demoiselle eligante a de riches dentelles;
Demoiselle, instrument pour paver les ruelles.
-Dragonfly is called an insect with four wings;
Young lady elegant with rich laces;
Drill, a machine for paving streets.

It's irrelevant whether or not Roussel actually held Freville's

book in his hands, or another analogous to it. The essen­
tial thing is that across this undeniable relationship of form,
Nouvelles Impressions appears as what it is: the inexhaustible
crossing of the mutual realm of language and being, an
inventory of the game by which things and words designate
one another, miss one another, betray one another, and
hide one another. In this way Nouvelles Impressions is related
to all of Roussel's other works: it defines the space and
location of language. But at the same time it profoundly
opposes each ofRoussel' s other works: in the minute inter­
stices of an identical language it creates narratives, descrip­
tions, skills, machines, stage settings, strictly unique, des­
tined to repeat things, or to repeat themselves, or even to
repeat death. The marvelous detailed machines enveloped
and made to appear natural the most startling meetings;
it's the festivity of ceremonial weddings in which words
and things contract among themselves and with each other,
an alliance dedicated to infinite repetition. Nouvelles Impres­
sions in search of impossible identities creates minuscule
poems where words collide or separate, charged with oppos­
ing magnetic polarity; in one or two verses they cross an
impenetrable distance between things, and from one to
the other establish a lightning contact which throws them
The Empty Lens 1 53
back to their original position. Thus strange shapes spring
forward, sparkling for a moment, poems of a second's
duration, where, in a spontaneous motion, the separation
of things and the emptiness between them is abolished
and reconstituted.
Poems of possible confusions:
-Quelque intrus cai"man proche un parasol fixe
Pour un lizard contre un cepe.
-Quand sur eux sans bourrasque,
It s 'est mis a neiger, des oeufs rouges masses
Pour des fraises qu 'on sucre,
-Pour un cil
Courbe evade d 'un oeil doux, une carne noire
De chamois.
- Un tuyau d 'eau pour une epaule d'immortel
Ou rampe un cheveu long.

-Some intruding alligator near a fixed parasol

For a lizard against a mushroom.
-When on them without a squall,
It began to snow on the piles of red eggs
For strawberries being sprinkled with sugar.
-For a curved lash
Lost by a sweet eye, the black horn
Of a mountain goat.
-A water hose for an immortal shoulder
Where lies a long strand of hair.

Poems of meetings without place:

-La boule aquatique et nue
D 'un dentaire effrayant recoin
-Une oisive araignee explorant un chalut
-L 'odalisque a qui Jutjete le tire-jus.
- Un cigare reduit a l'etat de megot,
Le disque du solei[ dans le ciel de Neptune
-Promethee aux fers dans le Caucase,
Le chat dorlote puis cuit de la mere Michel.
1 54 DEATH A N D THE LA B Y R I N TH
-Des doights nus d 'ecolier,
Une poutre a decorJuneraire.
-A bare aquatic ball
Of a frightening dental cavity
-A lazy spider exploring a dragnet
-The odalisque to whom was thrown the juicer.
-A cigar reduced to a butt,
The solar disk in the sky of Neptune
-Prometheus chained in the Caucasus,
Mother Goose 's cat, pampered then cooked.
-The bare fingers of a schoolboy,
A pole with funeral decor.

Poems of strict grammatical economy which duplicate

unbridled chance:
Quand nait l'orage a qui domini le contemple
Et l'oit pour moins que la lumiere aile le son.
When the storm arises, whoever is caught contemplates it
And listens to it, less for the winged light than the sound.

In this clash of words and strange images, sometimes

there's one that's suddenly perfect, such as this one of
destiny:
Le mal qui foudroie en plein bonheur les toupies
The evil that strikes the spinning tops in their full happiness

or this other one of the throat:

Un cavernaire arceau par le couchant rougi
A stalactite unique.
A cavernous arch reddened by the sunset
Has a unique stalactite.

All this infinitesimal poetry delivers in a raw state the

materials out of which formerly were meticulously con­
structed the machines ofEjur or of Locus Solus. Without the
The Empty Lens 1 55

structure of long mechanical discourse, pebbles and

flashes of light are dispersed here, erupting directly from
the mine, the chaos of objects and words by which all
language begins. The marvelous minerals which Roussel's
works leave asleep within the depth of their discourse are
now made visible, spread on the surface, a treasure
restored to the inchoate language. The space discovered
between the mask and the face, between appearance and
reality, even in the ambiguous volume of words, this emp­
tiness that had to be covered over with so many fantastic
and meticulous figures, is revealed as replete with wealth
fragmented into sequins: those that come forth, for a brief
moment, against the night, from the dangerous twinkling
of words and things. There in the imperceptible turns and
minuscule shocks, language finds its "tropological" space
( that is to say of turns and detours) , poetry its resources,
and the imagination its ether. The last picture with which
Roussel illustrated Nouvelles Impressions depicts, against the
darkness, a starry night.

Two additional words. Ejur's festivities were, as the text

tells us, a "gala of Incomparables" ( Incomparables, in fact,
were the prisoners and their black friends, since they were
unique in their talent for reconstructing exactly, and by
any means, the unfailing identity of things) . Well, what is
Nouvelles Impressions if not equally a festival of Incompara­
bles-the rapid dancing of a language leaping from one
thing to another, bringing them face-to-face, and from
their incompatibility setting off everywhere short circuits,
firecrackers, and sparks. Incomparables, sparkling, in­
numerable, dispersed in the emptiness of language which
brings them together and holds them apart-such as the
figures strewn across the skies of Nouvelles Impressions.
The two plays, L Etoile au Front and La Poussiere de Soleils,
which were written during the difficult composition of
 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
Nouvelles Impressions, open a parenthesis, as it were, where
one rediscovers the very structure of this last work, even
though they are subject to the process. L 'Etoile au Front is
constructed as a series of analogies: a listing of modest
obj ects whose illustrious origins place them in opposition
to the tarnished glory which is evoked in the footnote to
Canto III. Compared to this, which is brief, the play is at
an infinitely developed level. La Poussiere de Soleils is con­
structed like steps descending down a well to the treasure,
parentheses within one another (three times nine if I'm
not mistaken) . Could it be said that the sequence of La
Poussiere de Soleils leads to a secret identical to the one
revealed in the next to the last page of the poem, that is to
say, to the process? Perhaps. In any case, what is sur­
rounded by these triple parentheses squared would not be
the marvels of a forbidden knowledge, but rather the vis­
ible form of its own language.
 8
The Enclosed Sun

"H E ' s A P o o R little patient," said Dr. Pierre Janet.

This is a statement of limited insight coming from a
renowned psychologist.
It would be inconsequential, in truth, if Roussel himself
had not made a similar statement.
He broached the subject indirectly, recalling his illness
and janet's treatment with an indifference that only takes
into account historical fact: he quotes De l 'Angoisse a
l'Extase as a remote anecdotal document. His first-person
narrative in the posthumous revelation is already as cold
as the third person which is implied by the nature of the
subject of the book, and also perhaps in the stiffness of his
language.
Apropos of the "I" which speaks in How I Wrote Certain of
My Books, it is true that a disproportionate detachment at
the heart of the sentences he pronounces makes him as
remote as the third-person "he." They become confused
in the distance, where self-effacement brings out this third
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
person who has been speaking at all times and who always
remains the same.
This is because death has already exercised its sover­
eignty. Having decided to do away with himself, Roussel
defines the empty shell where his existence will be evident
to others. Dr. Janet, the crises, the illness, are no more
important than the success or failure, the controversial
performances, the respect of the chess players, the social
position of his family. These are the surface adjustments
on the exterior of the machine, and not of the precise
clockwork mechanism which secretly sets it in motion.
I believe on the contrary that Roussel exposes himself in
this third person whose discourse is already solidified. He
outlines in the direction of his death a passage that is
symmetrical to the one Canterel invented to drill into the
cadaver a return to life. He approaches step-by-step this
other, this same that he will become on the other side of the
impenetrable pane. And like the resurrectine, the cold of
the language defines the images which are reborn indefin­
itely, articulating this passage from life to death through
which the essential passes. He solemnly transmits the gen­
esis of works whose kinship he defines with madness and
suffering (so often seen in the anecdotes of L 'Etoile au
Front) , which must be its stigmata of legitimacy.
How could Roussel make his work vulnerable to this
devastating proximity when he was trying to gain "some
posthumous recognition"? Why would he place in j eop­
ardy a language protected for such a long time, and which
would be preserved forever by the death to which he is
exposed? Why, at the moment of showing it, this sudden
bracketing of a delirium of truth? If there is a relationship
between madness and death in this last work, no doubt it's
to point out that at all cost, and as Roussel actually accom­
plished it in that gesture in Palermo, the work must be set
free from the person who wrote it.
The Enclosed Sun 1 59
In the sparseness of his revelation, by contrast, he gives
the central position to madness. Consider how the text
develops: first there's the explanation of the process, then
the autobiographical narrative. Between these two Roussel
inserted three parentheses: the first brings up his illness;
the second the greatness ofJules Verne; the third stresses
the sovereign role of imagination in his works. And paren­
theses for Roussel have the quality of being open and
closed at the same time, which is essentially related to the
threshold. Within it what is stated is not merely adjacent,
but definitive. With this triple threshold, what is it that
is being set off if not the rigorous autonomy of language?
It's the lack of relationship with the outside world ("from
all my trips I have never gotten anything for my books") ,
empty space that words and their machines cross at a dizzy­
ing speed Gules Verne "has raised himself to the highest
peak attainable by human language") , the mask of mad­
ness beneath which can be seen this great luminous
emptiness.
Roussel never spoke of his crisis as "madness in the eyes
of the world." He never detaches himself from it. Rather, he
shows that for a while at least he found his place: "For sev­
eral months I experienced a feeling of glory of extraordin­
ary intensity." He internally experienced being within a sun
whose center he was. Roussel does not take into account
other people's lack of understanding of his crisis. He speaks
of it as a luminous hearth from which he is banished with­
out reprieve. No doubt he perceived this sphere in the
works ofJules Verne and it made all real suns disappointing.
He suspended it above his posthumous revelation.
In fact, this solar experience during his twentieth year
was not perceived from within as a form of madness. It's the
opposite of the events that followed soon after, triggered
by the lack of success of La Doublure. It came as "a terrible
and violent shock," which was followed by "a frightful ner-
1 60 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y RI N T H
vous illness." It is only with this subject that the word "ill­
ness" is used. I noticed another fact: on the subj ect of
Martial, Janet evokes a patient in his "forty-fifth year"
( that's the period of the writing of Nouvelles Impressions) .
Roussel never says a word about this episode. He only cites
the pages of Janet's work that refer to Martial's states of
glory, not those which evoked more recent events (prob­
ably pathological even in Roussel's eyes) . Only that first
sun in its ingenuousness belongs to the body of his work.
It's difficult to accept his divisions. These things form a
seamless material. During the period Roussel was working
on his first book, he experienced a feeling of universal
glory. It was not an exacerbated desire for fame but a
physical state: "What I wrote was surrounded with lumi­
nous rays. Each line was repeated thousands of times and I
wrote with thousands of flaming pen points." When the
book appears, all these duplicated suns suddenly are
extinguished; the twining flames are absorbed in the black
ink. All around Roussel this language which was luminous
in its least little syllable, like a magical liquid, now was dis­
solved in a world without attention: "When the young man
with intense emotion went out into the street and noticed
that people did not turn around as he passed, his feeling
of greatness and luminosity was suddenly extinguished."
It's the night of melancholia. However, this light will con­
tinue to shine near him and from afar (as if from within a
darkness that obscures distances and makes them unattain­
able) , dazzling or imperceptible according to an ambigu­
ity characteristic of all his work. It will even give rise to this
decision to die, to rej oin in one swift leap this marvelous
point, the heart of night, and hearth of light. All of Rous­
sel's language resides in this vain and obstinate place which
offers clarity from a distance. It gives glimpses of it, but is
strangely closed in on itself, asleep within its own porous
substance, which lets it burst forth at a long night's distance
The Enclosed Sun
that it never crosses: "This feeling of a moral sun, I was
never able to regain it, I sought it and seek it always . . . I
am Tannhauser longing for Venusberg." Nothing in this
sequence can be set aside.
That this sequence (or one of its curves) coincided with
his illness is one thing. But that Roussel's language never
stopped trying to abolish the distance that separated him
from the original sun, that is another matter.
I don't want to return to a question that is tirelessly
repeated. I am trying to find out if there is not, solidly
buried, an experience where sun and language . . .
Such an experience presupposes that it's attainable, and
whence can it be articulated except from this impure ground
where his illness and his work are considered equivalent?
He speaks in a varied vocabulary, crowded with qualities
or changing themes which are sometimes evident as symp­
toms, sometimes as aspects of the style, or of the suffering
or of the language, so that without great pains a certain
definition can be formulated which is as valid for the work
as for the neurosis. For example, the theme of opening
and closing, of association and of dissociation, of the secret,
of dreaded death cm�jured forth and preserved, of resem­
blance and imperceptible differences, of the return to
being identical, of repeated words and many others which
belong to the vocabulary of obsessions, leaves on the work
the imprint of a pathological nervous system. It's easy to
recognize the same outline in the rituals Roussel formed
for every day of his life: he wore his collars for only one
morning, his neckties three times, his suspenders for fif­
teen days; he often fasted so that food did not disturb his
serenity; he wanted to hear talk neither about death nor
about frightening things out of a fear that words carried
the contagion of misfortune. His life, Janet said, is con­
structed like his books. But if so many similarities leap to
the eye, it's because diverse forms have been isolated in
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
order to be clearly perceived (rituals, themes, images,
obsessions) , which, belonging neither to the order of lan­
guage nor completely to the order of behavior, can circu­
late back and forth from one to the other. It is then no
longer difficult to show that the work and the illness are
entangled and incomprehensible one without the other.
The more subtle will claim that the work poses "the ques­
tion of the illness," or rather, poses "the illness as a ques­
tion." The game was played in the beginning: a whole
doubtful system of analogies was given.
There is, however, the fact that the identity of certain
forms presents itself as an obvious perception. Why refuse
to see the same image in the cells for cadavers that Can­
terel had built in the middle of his solitary garden and the
small glass opening that Roussel had set into the coffin of
his mother, so that he could contemplate from the other
side of time this cold life, offered up without the hope of
an impossible resurrectine. The obsession within the work
with masks, disguises, doubles, and duplications can be
made analogous to Roussel's talent for impersonation,
which he displayed early and to which he gave a slightly
ironic importance. "I experienced the feeling of success
only when I sang to my own accompaniment on the piano
and above all when performing the numerous imitations I
did of actors and of ordinary people. But at least my suc­
cess was enormous and complete." It is as if the unique
sun-which once formerly was of the body of his lan­
guage-could only be rediscovered in the dividing of the
self, in the impersonation of others, in this slight space
between the face and the mask, whence sprang precisely
the language of La Doublure, when the sun was still within
him. Perhaps all the marvelous imitations presented by
Talou's prisoners reflect Roussel's obstinacy: "He worked
for seven years on each of his impersonations, practicing
them when he was alone, repeating each sentence aloud to
The Enclosed Sun
catch the intonation, Imitating the gestures until he
achieved a perfect resemblance." In this ascetic trans­
formation into someone else, can't there also be found the
incessant going back and forth of death within the cells of
Locus Solus ? Roussel deadened himself no doubt to be able
to imitate this other life alive in others; and inversely by
replacing the self with others, he imposed on them the
rigidity of the corpse. The suicidal and murderous gesture
of imitation recalls how much death is present in the work
by the play of duplication and repetition of the language.
But are there other resemblances between these texts
and his behavior, and is there something else, besides
resemblance? Where do these images come from? And
from what territory do they rise up? And on what ground
are we standing in order to perceive them, certain of not
being mistaken? What significance can a trail left in literary
language or in a gesture have when by definition the work
does not have the same meaning as everyday language?
In fact, none. There is no system common to existence
and to language, for a very simple reason: language alone
forms the system of existence. Along with the space that it
defines, it constitutes the place of forms. Here is an
example: as indicated, if Roussel showed death in the glass
pane of a parenthesis, he willingly hid the secret of birth
in the heart of a labyrinth. This is how he stated it for Dr.
Janet: "Practicing forbidden acts in private rooms knowing
that it is prohibited, risking punishment or at least the con­
tempt of respectable people, that is perfection. But that
nudity should be shown, and sexual pleasures can simply
be seen at a public spectacle without risk of punishment,
with the consent of parents, and while pretending to
remain chaste and virtuous, that is unthinkable, inadmis­
sible. Everything concerning love must remain forbidden
and inaccessible." A relationship seems to appear between
these statements and the secretly glorious births in L 'Etoile
 D E A T H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
au Front. I am aware that it cannot be taken literally. But in
the context of the work, and fundamental to Roussel's
experience of language, there seems to be a place where
birth is hidden, the unique and illegitimate impediment,
but it can also be a repetition that is always anticipating
itself; it acts as a mirror in relation to death; before life, it
gives a due date to be met but for a long time kept secret.
The labyrinth of time is folded back upon itself, and
within this darkened heart its invisible brilliance shines for
no one. That is the reason why birth is beyond language
and at the end of language. The words slowly return toward
it, but can never reach it, since they are always a beginning
and they are always a repetition. When they seem to have
reached it, what do they bring to this empty place if not
what can be repeated, that is to say, life repeated in death?
Birth, which is excluded from the basic possibility of lan­
guage, must also be removed from everyday meaning.
Thus it is not the theme of a sexuality carefully folded
within a ritual which is at the origin of all these laby­
rinthian births so frequent in the work. Rather it is the
relationship of a language that duplicates and is dupli­
cated every morning in all its original purity. Birth is an
inaccessible place because the repetition of language
always seeks a way to return to it. This labyrinth of origin is
not a visible result of his illness (a defense mechanism
against sexuality) any more than it is the veiled expression
of esoteric knowledge (hiding the way in which bodies can
give birth to one another) ; it is a radical experience of
language which proclaims that it is never quite con­
temporary with its solar origin.
What is meant by this experience, Roussel's patho­
logical sensations or the core of his work? Or both at the
same time, in one doubtful word?
Isn' t the language situated between the work and mad­
ness, the place, empty and filled, invisible and inevitable,
The Enclosed Sun
where they are mutually exclusive? In Roussel's early works
language manifested itself as a sun. It placed things in sight
and within reach, but in such a dazzling visibility that it
obscured what it had to show, separated appearance and
reality, the face and the mask with a thin silver of light.
Language, like the sun, is this brilliance which cuts,
removes the cardboard surface, and proclaims what it says:
it is this double, this pure and simple duplicate. The cruelty
of this solar language is that instead of being the perfect
sphere of an illuminated world, it divides things to intro­
duce darkness into them. It is within this language that La
Doublure takes its place. During this period the pathological
feeling is that of an internal globe, marvelously luminous,
which seeks to shed its light on the world; it must be safe­
guarded in its original space out of fear lest its rays lose
themselves even to the depth of reaching China: Roussel
shut himself up in a room with curtains carefully drawn.
The language traces what is shared by these opposing
images. The sun is enclosed, running the danger of being
lost in the external night, and there the sun set free creates
beneath each surface a little lake of night, shifting and
disturbing. These two profiles facing each other create out
of the same need the following figure: that of an enclosed
sun. It is closed in so as not to dissipate itself, so that it will
no longer divide things in two, but present them against the
background of its own luminosity. It's the solar language
held prisoner by the lens of La Vue, enveloping men, words,
things, faces, dialogues, thoughts, gestures, all displayed
without any reticence or secret within the circular glass
lens. It is also the opening found within a unique and dupli­
cated sentence, the calm microcosm of the circular stories.
But this period of the domesticated sun, "placed in a box"
that is opened at will and visible to the core by a piercing,
sovereign glance, was for his illness the period of melan­
choly, of the lost sun, and of persecution. With Impressions
1 66 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y RI N T H
d 'Afrique, the sun of language is hidden within the secret;
but at the heart of this night where it is maintained, it
becomes marvelously fecund, causing machines and
automaton corpses, incredible inventions and careful imi­
tations to be born above itself, in the light of garden par­
ties. During this time, life holds a promise like an immi­
nent afterlife. Thus the work and the illness circle around
their incompatibility, which binds them.
It only remains to see in this exclusion a compensatory
mechanism ( the work bears the burden of resolving in the
imaginary the problems posed by the illness) , which leads
us back to Janet, and to other, lesser people.
Unless it is perceived as an essential incompatibility,
nothing can ever fill the hollow core. It is also toward this
void that Artaud wanted to move in his work, but from
which he always found himself separated: he separated it
from his work and also from himself by the work; he never
stopped casting his language toward this medullary ruin,
hollowing out a work which is the absence of a body of
work. Paradoxically, for Roussel this hollowness is the sun,
a sun which is there but which remains unattainable. It
shines, but its rays remain contained within its sphere; it
dazzles, but it cannot be seen through; from the core of
this sun words rise, but the words cover it up and hide it; it
is unique and yet it is double, and twice duplicated since it
is its own mirror and nocturnal opposite.
But what is this solar emptiness if not the negation of his
madness through his work, and of the work by his mad­
ness? Their mutual exclusion is along more radical lines
than can be recognized within the interpretation of a
unique subjective experience.
This solar void is neither the psychological background
of the work (a meaningless idea) nor a theme that coincides
with his illness. It is Roussel's linguistic space, the void from
which he speaks, the absence which binds and mutually
The Enclosed Sun
excludes his work and his madness. This void is not to be
understood as a metaphor. It is the insolvency of words
which are fewer in number than the things they designate,
and due to this principle of economy must take on mean­
ing. If language were as rich as existence, it would be the
useless and mute duplicate of things; it would not exist.
Yet without names to identify them, things would remain
in darkness. This illuminating flaw of language was
experienced by Roussel as an anguish, as an obsession, if
you will. In any case, quite unique forms of experience
(quite "deviant," which is to say quite disorienting) were
required to expose this bare linguistic fact: that language
speaks only from something essential that is lacking. From
this lack is experienced the "play"-in both senses of the
word ( the limit and the principle simultaneously)-in the
fact that the same word can designate two different things
and the same sentence repeated can have another mean­
ing. From this follows the proliferating emptiness of lan­
guage, its capacity to say things, all things, to lead them to
their luminous being, to place in the sun their "mute"
truth, to "unmask" them. From that also follows its power
to create by simple repetition things never said, nor heard,
nor seen. There is the misery and the celebration of the
signifier, and the anguish before too many and too few
signs. Roussel's sun, which is always there and always "lack­
ing," which runs the risk of dissipating itself outside, but
which also shines on the horizon-that is the consti­
tutional flaw of language, its poverty, the irreducible dis­
tance from which the light shines indefinitely. By this
essential distance where language is called upon to fatally
repeat itself, and things to be absurdly confused, death
makes audibly clear the strange promise that language will
no longer repeat itself, but will be able to repeat infinitely
that which is no more.
Thus all of his work is brought back to this unity of an
1 68 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y RI N T H
"anguish" before language, to this timid psychological
formulation.
It is, rather, an "anxiety" about the nature of language.
Roussel's "unreason," his derogatory play on words, his
obsessive application, his absurd inventions, communicate
doubtlessly with the reasoning of our world. Perhaps one
important thing will be clear one day: the literature of the
"absurd," from which we have recently freed ourselves, was
mistaken in the belief that it was a definition of the con­
sciousness, lucid and mythological at the same time, of
our condition. It was only the blind and negative side of an
experience which is common to our time, revealing to us
that it is not "meaning" which is lacking but the signifiers,
which are made significant only by what is lacking. In the
confusing play of history and existence, we simply discover
the general law of the game of significance, in which is pur­
sued our reasonable history. Things are perceived because
words are lacking; the light of their being is the fiery crater
where language breaks down. Things, words, vision and
death, the sun and language make a unique form, the very
same one that we are. Roussel in some way has defined its
geometry. He has opened to our literary language a strange
space that could be defined as linguistic if it were not its
mirror image, its dreamy usage, enchanted and mythic. If
Roussel's work is separated from this space (which is
ours) , then it can only be seen as the haphazard marvels of
the absurd, or the baroque play of an esoteric language
which means "something else." If on the contrary his work
is placed there, Roussel appears as he defined himself: the
inventor of a language which only speaks about itself,
a language absolutely simple in its duplicated being, a
language about language, enclosing its own sun in its
sovereign and central flaw. We owe the knowledge of this
invention to Michel Leiris, who prevented it from being
lost, since he transmitted it twice, in his remembrance of
The Enclosed Sun 1 69
Roussel, and in his novel The Rules of the Game, which is so
essentially related to Locus Solus. No doubt it was necessary
that from all sides of our culture be articulated this
experience before all language which is anxious and ani­
mated, is extinguished and then brought back to life by
the marvelous void of the signifiers. The anguish of the
signified is what has made Roussel's suffering the solitary
discovery of what is closest to us in our language. It makes
his illness our problem. It enables us to speak of him in
the context of his own language.
So you think this has justified your spending so many
pages . . .
 9
An Interview with
Michel Foucault
BY CHARLES RUAS

M 1 c H E L F o u c A u L T s E T our meeting for five o'clock

at his apartment on the Rue de Vaugirard. The dignified
street of arcades along the Luxembourg Gardens quickly
becomes bourgeois with shops-bakery, greengrocer,
dairy products, delicatessen, butcher-bustling with
shoppers and heavy with traffic at that hour. The inter­
mittent sunshine made the limestone buildings streaked
with urban grime suddenly glow with a golden light
among the deep luminous foliage of the sycamore
trees.
His address turned out to be in a postwar white concrete
apartment block. I went through the gates, past the garage
and an intensely green garden leading to his building in the
rear. In the small lobby I stepped into a cupboard-sized
elevator which slowly took me to the top floor. When I
rang the bell, Foucault opened the door immediately, and
my first impression was one of asceticism. He was of medium
height, thin, wearing dark clothes, and his head was clean-
 D EATH A N D T H E LAB YR I N T H
shaven. He appeared reserved and concentrated, but his
speaking voice was warm, spontaneous, and direct, and his
manner informal. He wore glasses with thick lenses, and his
glance was intense, his eyes pale blue; but when he took the
glasses off, he seemed completely unfocused and dreamy.
His speech was often interrupted by a slight but persistent
dry cough, which was the only suggestion of illness about
him in September 1983.
He had looked forward to this conversation, as he was
surprised by and curious about the American interest in
his study of Raymond Roussel. He readily offered to assist
me by clarifying any obscurity in his text. He proposed
that I mark the passages I wanted to discuss in the course
of working on my translation. At the same time he asked
for the edited transcript of this conversation so that he
could make corrections. He thought that our conversa­
tions during the course of my work could eventually make
an apt postscript to the English translation of his study.
Nine months later in New York I was on my way to the
post office to mail this material to him when the terrible
news of his premature death caused by cancer appeared in
the newspapers.
I remember being surprised the day of this interview on
looking around his apartment to discover that it was one
story above the roofline of the surrounding older buildings.
The apartment was painted white, the floor covered by
a pale tan wall-to-wall carpet; the sofa and chairs were off­
white. The whole apartment seemed like a library because
one wall, completely lined with bookcases, faced a wall of
windows giving onto the open sky. The surrounding roof­
tops spread before us in a sweep of weathered tiles, slate­
roofed mansards, dormers, and terraces. In every direc­
tion rose chimneys with coolie-hat coverings and round
fans. With the clouds great waves of light and shadow
moved across this view. In the sitting area we settled on the
An Interview with Michel Foucault
floor as the most comfortable place to speak, and I men­
tioned the wonderful view. Foucault replied that it was not
the view that he valued about the apartment, but it was the
clarity of light for thought that he appreciated.

M.F.: I wrote this study of Raymond Roussel when I was

quite young. It happened completely by chance, and I
want to stress this element of chance because I have to
admit that I had never heard of Roussel until the year
1957. I can recall how I discovered his work: it was during
a period when I was living abroad in Sweden and returned
to France for the summer. I went to the librairie Jose Corti
to buy I can ' t recall what book. Can you visualize that huge
book-store across from the Luxembourg Gardens? Jose
Corti, publisher and bookseller, was there behind his enor­
mous desk, a distinguished old man. He was busy speaking
to a friend, and obviously he is not the kind of bookseller
that you can interrupt with a "Could you find me such and
such a book?" You have to wait politely until the conversa­
tion is over before making a request. Thus, while waiting, I
found my attention drawn to a series of books of that
faded yellow color used by publishing firms of the late nine­
teenth, early twentieth centuries; in short, books the likes
of which aren't made anymore. I examined them and saw
"Librairie Lemerre" on the cover. I was puzzled to find these
old volumes from a publishing firm as fallen now in repu­
tation as that of Alphonse Lemerre. I selected a book out
of curiosity to see whatJose Corti was selling from the stock
of the Lemerre firm, and that's how I came upon the work
of someone I had never heard of named Raymond Rous­
sel, and the book was entitled La Vue. Well, from the first
line I was completely taken by the beauty of the style,
so strange and so strangely close to that of Robbe-Grillet,
who was just beginning to publish his work. I could see a
relationship between La Vue and Robbe-Grillet's work in
1 74 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
general, but Le Voyeur in particular. At that point Jose
Corti's conversation came to an end, I requested the book
I needed, and asked timidly who was Raymond Roussel,
because in addition to La Vue, his other works were on the
shelf. Corti looked at me with a generous sort of pity and
said, "But, after all, Roussel . . . " I immediately understood
that I should have known about Raymond Roussel, and
with equal timidity I asked if I could buy the book since
he was selling it. I was surprised or rather disappointed
to find that it was expensive. Jose Corti probably told me
that day I should read How I Wrote Certain of My Books.
Raymond Roussel's work immediately absorbed me: I was
taken by the prose style even before learning what was
behind it-the process, the machines, the mechanisms­
and no doubt when I discovered his process and his
techniques, the obsessional side of me was seduced a sec­
ond time by the shock of learning of the disparity between
this methodically applied process, which was slightly
naive, and the resulting intense poetry. Slowly and system­
atically I began to buy all of his works. I developed an
affection for his work, which remained secret, since I
didn't discuss it.
The strange thing is that I met Robbe-Grillet for the first
time in Hamburg in 1960 and we became friends and went
to the Hamburg Fair together, going through the fun
house maze of mirrors. It's the starting point of his novel
Dans le Labyrinthe. By a mental lapse that can ' t have been
entirely innocent on my part, I never spoke of Roussel
with him, nor asked about his relationship to Roussel.
That's how things stood for several years until one day
during vacation I decided to write a small article on Rous­
sel, but by then I was so absorbed by Roussel and his work
that I isolated myself for two months and in fact wrote
what turned out to be this book.
C.R.: If you began with the idea for an article, did other
An Interview with Michel Foucault
ideas that had to be explored come to you in the course of
your work?
M.F.: My intention was to write an article on Roussel for
Critique magazine. But after a few days I knew that it would
be longer than an article, and I wrote without any thought
of where I would publish it or how. I had discussed my
work with friends who were critics, and, as a result, one day
I received a telephone call from an editor asking me what
I was working on.
"Oh, I'm working on a book about Raymond Roussel."
"Would you let me read it when you've completed it?
Will it take you a long time?"
For once in my life I, who take such a long time with my
books, could answer proudly, "I'll be finished with it very
soon."
"When?" he asked.
I answered, "In eleven or twelve minutes," an answer
that was completely justified by the fact that I had started
typing the last page. That's the story of this book.
As for Robbe-Grillet and my lapse into silence, it was
after the publication of the book that I learned that his
novel Le Voyeurwas originally entitled La Vue as a tribute to
Raymond Roussel. It was his editor who, for completely
justifiable commercial considerations, thought the title
made the novel unsalable, and finally they agreed on Le
Voyeur.
C.R. : At that time Roussel was part of your interest in
the whole movement of the nouveau roman [new novel] .
M.F.: Yes, I encountered La Vue by chance, and I believe
I can honestly say that if I hadn't been preconditioned by
the reading of Robbe-Grillet, Butor, and Barthes I would
not have been capable on my own of experiencing this
shock of recognition while reading La Vue. The chance was
greater of my being interested by How I Wrote Certain ofMy
Books, or by Impressions d 'Afrique, or by any other sort of
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H
novelty than La Vue. I really believe that this previous con­
ditioning was necessary.
To state things in another way: I belong to that gener­
ation who as students had before their eyes, and were
limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomen­
ology, and existentialism. Interesting and stimulating as
these might be, naturally they produced in the students
completely immersed in them a feeling of being stifled,
and the urge to look elsewhere. I was like all other stu­
dents of philosophy at that time, and for me the break was
first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking perform­
ance; then reading the works of Blanchot, Bataille, and
Robbe-Grillet, especially his novels Les Gommes [The
Erasers] , La Jalousie Qealousy] , and Le Voyeur; Michel
Butor, Barthes' Mythologies [Mythologies] , and Levi­
Strauss. There's an enormous difference between Bataille,
Levi-Strauss, Blanchot, and Robbe-Grillet, and I don't
want t o make them seem similar. For m y generation they
represented the break with a perspective dominated by
Marxism, phenomenology, and existentialism. Having
had enough of this French university culture, I left the
country to go to Sweden. Had I remained within that
limited horizon of my student days, under the system of
classes, and that sense of the world, the end of history, it
seems likely that I could have opened Roussel's book and
slammed it shut with a good laugh.
C.R.: But for you the break was made with your histor­
ical study of madness. You had formulated your ideas
and you were committed to a direction even before
discovering Roussel.
M.F.: In fact, I was reading Roussel at the time I was work­
ing on my book about the history of madness. I was div­
ided between existential psychology and phenomenology,
and my research was an attempt to discover the extent
these could be defined in historical terms. That's when I
An Interview with Michel Foucault 1 77
first understood that the subject would have to be defined
in other terms than Marxism or phenomenology.
C.R.: I was interested by the fact that Roussel was a con­
temporary of Marcel Proust. If Proust's work represents
the final elaboration of nineteenth-century fiction, the
novelistic conventions taken to extremes, then what is
Roussel's position? Cocteau called Roussel "the Proust of
dreams." To me Roussel's work is the "implosion" of all
novelistic conventions; he is the artist who disappears
behind his work; he is hidden by the "ready-made," by the
"found" convention of language that he uses to create his
work.
M.F.: Yes, I think my answer will startle you because you
have become "Rousselian." I have to admit that I would
not dare to compare Roussel to Proust. You are right in
the historical scheme of things. But I would remain very
cautious about Roussel's historical place. His was an
extremely interesting experiment; it wasn't only a lin­
guistic experiment, but an experiment with the nature of
language, and it's more than the experimentation of
someone obsessed. He truly created, or, in any case, broke
through, embodied, and created a form of beauty, a lovely
curiosity, which is in fact a literary work. But I wouldn't say
that Roussel is comparable to Proust.
C.R.: In the similarity to the work of Robbe-Grillet, was
it his breaking with the literary conventions of his day that
aroused your interest?
M.F.: There are several aspects I would comment on.
First, it must be noted that Roussel belongs to a series of
writers who exist in English, exist in German, exist in all
languages. They are writers who have literally been
obsessed with the problem of language, for whom literary
construction and the "interplay of language" are directly
related. I couldn't say that was a tradition because, in fact,
it's a tradition that disappears with each writer as if it were
 D E AT H A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H
so individual to each writer that it could not be transmit­
ted but is rediscovered every time. And sometimes there
are similarities that reappear. Roussel is part of that series.
Of course, in the period when he was working, around
1925, he worked alone and was isolated, and, I believe, he
could not be understood. There has been interest in his
work only in two contexts: first, that of surrealism, with the
problem of automatic writing; second, that of the nouveau
roman in the years 1950 to 1960, a period when the prob­
lem of the relationship of literature and linguistic struc­
ture was not only a topic of theoretical speculation but
also loomed large on the literary horizon.
C.R.: You had just finished your historical study of
madness. Was it Roussel's psychological problems which
drew your interest and made you decide to write about
him at that time?
M.F.: Not at all. Once I had discovered Roussel and I
learned that he had been a patient of Dr. Pierre Janet, and
that his case had been written up in two pages that he
quoted, I was delighted and tried to discover if anything
else had been written about him in the medical literature
of the day. But I could find nothing. I have to admit that my
research was not extensive precisely because it was not his
psychology that interested me. I don't think that I make
extensive references to his psychopathology in my study.
C.R.: I assumed that your work on the history of mad­
ness would make you susceptible to Roussel.
M.F. : It's possible, but then I would say that I wasn't
conscious of my interest. It wasn't because of the cultural,
medical, scientific, institutional problems of madness that I
became interested in Roussel. No doubt what could be said
is that perhaps the same reasons which in my perverseness
[laughs] and in my own psychopathological makeup made
me pursue my interest in madness, on the one hand,
made me pursue my interest in Roussel on the other.
An Interview with Michel Foucault
C.R.: In your study you analyze the problem of "found"
or "ready-made" language. When you referred to the sur­
realists' interest in automatic writing I immediately
thought of their use of found obj ects, which has entered
the mainstream of experimentation in the visual arts as
well as writing. Were you challenged by the problem of
how to define "found language"?
M.F.: Well, it is the interest I have in modes of dis­
course, that is to say, not so much in the linguistic struc­
ture which makes such a series of utterances possible, but
rather the fact that we live in a world in which things have
been said. These spoken words in reality are not, as
people tend to think, a wind that passes without leaving a
trace, but in fact, diverse as are the traces, they do remain.
We live in a world completely marked by, all laced with,
discourse, that is to say, utterances which have been
spoken, of things said, of affirmations, interrogations, of
discourses which have already occurred. To that extent,
the historical world in which we live cannot be dissociated
from all the elements of discourse which have inhabited
this world and continue to live in it as the economic pro­
cess, the demographic, etcetera, etcetera. Thus spoken
language, as a language that is already present, in one way
or another determines what can be said afterward either
independent of or within the general framework of lan­
guage. In certain of Roussel's works nothing is given at
the beginning except the possibility of encountering the
"already said," and with this "found language" to con­
struct, according to his rules, a certain number of things,
but on the condition that they always refer back to the
"already said"-that at first delighted me, and seemed to
be the interplay of literary creation starting from a cul­
tural and historical fact. It also seemed to me that it was
worth questioning.
C.R.: But the question remains, what is the relationship
1 80 D EATH AND T H E LAB Y RI N T H
of the artist who will use, or starts with, a "ready-made"
element in his work?
M.F.: Yes, if you wish, it's interesting to see how he dis­
torts the fact. For example, as original as a novel might be,
even if it is a Ulysses or a Remembrance of Things Past, it takes
its place in a novelistic tradition and thus in the "already
said" of the novel. The interesting thing about Roussel is
that he doesn't use the generic matrix of the novelistic
genre as the principle of development or construction. He
starts with the "already said," and this "already said" can be
a sentence found by chance, read in an advertisement,
found in a book, or something practical . . .
C.R.: It's his point of departure. But after writing the
novels, Roussel turned to the theater with the intention of
communicating more easily with the public. You would
think that the theater would lend itself to the use of a
"found language," since it is the genre of the world of
speech and conversation.
M.F.: Well, the use of an already spoken language in the
theater usually has the function of establishing a sense of
verisimilitude for what is seen on stage. The familiar lan­
guage placed in the mouths of the actors makes the viewer
forget the arbitrariness of the situation. What Roussel did
was to take a completely banal sentence, heard every day,
taken from songs, read on walls, and with it he con­
structed the most absurd things, the most improbable
situations, without any possible relationship to reality.
Starting from the "already said," it's a perverse play on the
usual function it exercises in the theater.
C.R.: I wanted to point out that in the novels Impressions
d 'Afrique and Locus Solus the fantastic beings and situations
he has created are very similar to nineteenth-century games
and toys. Some scenes could be descriptions of the action
of those exquisite and complex automatons such as the
doll who can paint Napoleon's portrait, play the piano, or
An Interview with Michel Foucault
write a letter. You mentioned the naive or primitive aspect
of his process. Without wanting to negate the complexity
of Roussel's work, I wondered if this fundamentally pri­
vate imagination was not a return to childhood, or rather
a return to pure fantasy.
M.F. : It's absolutely true that there is an implicit and
sometimes explicit reference to children's games, these
automatons, rabbits playing drums and such, if they are
taken to extremes. Only then could one say that this core of
childlike imagination, the child which generally appears in
all writers and is acclimated within the writing by a whole
labor of elaboration, is pushed or taken toward another
level of the fantastic. Roussel keeps them on their own level,
in a way, and starting from the rabbit beating drums, makes
the machine increasingly complex, but always remaining
the same without ever passing to another register or level.
There are constructions which are so intensely poetic that
I don 't think they are childish in themselves, but are a way
of elaborating this core of childlike imagination.
C.R.: This is the aspect you analyzed in your study of his
machines for the transformation of language and the hol­
lowness, the emptiness within words. You quote Dumar­
sais' description of the "tropological" shift in the meaning
of words as the basis of his creation. Beneath the text a
secondary language is repeated, echoing within the text.
Do you read Roussel listening for that second, dead-and­
buried language?
M.F.: Yes, that's an interesting problem, and one of the
things about Roussel that has remained completely enig­
matic. It must be remembered that he didn't always use the
process. In La Vue there is no process structuring the work.
What I tried to accomplish in the book is to come to an
understanding of what was the essential matrix that would
take into account the texts without the process, and the
texts with the process, those which obeyed the rules of the
 D EATH A N D T H E L A B Y R I NTH
process and those which don't. I don't know if I accom­
plished what I set out to do, but that was my goal. The
process poses a problem which is all the more interesting to
me because I have a student who is completely bilingual­
French-German-who is interested in Roussel, and who is
trying to write texts with a linguistic process all the more
complicated because he has to coordinate the use of two
registers: French and German. The problem with the texts
he has shown me is knowing if the interest, the complexity,
the refinement are enough to confer literary merit on the
texts produced. Working with him, reading his texts, I
couldn't help thinking of what Roussel said: "Still, one
needs to know how to use it. Forjust as one can use rhymes
to compose good or bad verses, so one can use this method
to produce good or bad works." Nevertheless Roussel's
work gives the distinct impression of an aesthetic control of
imaginative standards. It seemed to me that these aesthetic
criteria, co nside rin g all the possibl e outcomes available to
him, were inseparable from the nature of the process itself.
In the extreme, what if we didn't have How / Wrote Certain
of My Books ? I believe it would be absolutely impossible to
reconstruct his process. I'm not referring to Nouvelles
Impressions d 'Afrique, because there the process is typo­
graphical, thus evident on the page. But in Impressions
d 'Afrique and in La Poussiere de Soleils, could one be unaware
of a linguistic process? There's no doubt one can ignore it.
Does it diminish the quality of the work? How would Roussel
be perceived by a reader who was unaware of the process?
For example, what of the American reader, or the Japanese
reader, since he has been translated into Japanese? Can
they become interested in Roussel or see the beauty of his
work without knowing that there is a process, or even know­
ing that there is a process, not being able to perceive it
since the original matrix of language is not available?
C.R.: Roussel's process incorporates word play and
An Interview with Michel Foucault
double entendre which are considered trivial by us, but are
basic aspects of Japanese poetics. Translations of classical
Japanese poetry have footnotes giving the second reading
of the poem. Reading Roussel in English translation, one
knows there is another aspect which is not delivered,
but the surface quality of language and imagination is
strikingly original and delightful.
M.F.: There is a quality of imagination which makes the
work, even without knowing about the process, stand on its
own. But the knowledge that there is a process throws the
reader into a state of being uncertain, and even while
knowing that there is no way of rediscovering the process,
and even if one enjoys simply reading the text, the fact that
there is a secret transforms the experience of reading into
one of deciphering, a game, a more complex undertaking,
more disturbing, more anxious than when one reads a
simple text for the pure pleasure of it. I believe it matters
to some extent knowing what was the original text that
produced such and such an incident. With hard work cer­
tain sentences that served as points of departure can be
clarified. A whole team of people working for years could
discover the sentences that served as matrixes for each
episode in Roussel's novels. But I'm not certain that it
would be interesting, because it seems that aside from the
beauty of the text that is pleasing in itself, the conscious­
ness of there being a process gives the act of reading a
certain tension. I'm not convinced that a knowledge of the
actual text from which it starts is at all necessary.
C.R.: Were you interested in his relationship to the sur­
realists? He seems to have influenced artists especially.
M.F.: No, but I learned that Michel Leiris knew Roussel.
I was interested in this relationship because Leiris' novel
Biffures [Erasures] has a number of things reminiscent of
Roussel. I discussed it with Leiris, but everything he had to
say about Roussel is contained in his articles.
 D EATH A N D T H E LABYRINTH
C.R.: Marcel Duchamp and other artists discuss Roussel
only incidentally; there is no attempt to come to grips with
his work.
M.F.: I believe that the relationship between Roussel
and the surrealists was only incidental, as opposed to
Leiris, who knew him. I believe the surrealists were
amused and entertained by him; they saw him as a sort of
Douanier Rousseau, a primitive of literature. But I don't
believe the surrealists did more than orchestrate the char­
acter of Roussel, and the demonstrations defending the
performances of his plays.
C.R.: How do you interpret his turning to the theater to
obtain popular success?
M.F.: But, you know, for him writing was that! There's
a beautiful passage in which he said that after his first
book he expected that the next morning there would be
rays of light streaming from his person and that everyone
on the street would be able to see that he had written a
book. That's the obscure desire of a person who writes. It
is true that the first text one writes is neither written for
others, nor for who one is: one writes to become someone
other than who one is. Finally there is an attempt at modi­
fying one's way of being through the act of writing. It is
this transformation of his way of being that he observed,
he believed in, he sought after, and for which he suffered
horribly.
C.R.: Mter twenty years, can you see the place of this
study in the perspective of your work and the develop­
ment of your thinking?
M.F.: Those things that matter to me in a personal way,
or which are important to me just as they are, I don't feel
any inclination to analyze.
C.R.: From the little that is known about Roussel's life,
such as his use of drugs, was opium the drug of his day?
M.F.: Oh yes, but you know the use of cocaine was al-
An Interoiew with Michel Foucault
ready fairly widespread. It's a subject which interests me
greatly, but one which I've had to put aside-the study of
the culture of drugs or drugs as culture in the West from
the beginning of the nineteenth century. No doubt it
started much earlier, but it would come up to the present,
it's so closely tied to the artistic life of the West.
C.R.: Roussel was hospitalized for drugs rather than his
emotional problems.
M.F.: The first time that he was treated by Dr. Janet, a
great Parisian psychologist of the day, Roussel was quite
young, seventeen or eighteen, and it was due to causes
that were considered pathological, not because of his use
of drugs.
C.R.: Yet in the end when he wanted to take the cure, it
was for detoxification.
M.F. : I know that when he committed suicide in Palermo,
he had reserved rooms at the hospital in Kreuzlingen.
C.R.: The phenomenon of an artist obscured by his own
work-do you think that it is related to his sexual identity?
M.F.: Between cryptography and sexuality as a secret,
there is certainly a direct relationship. Let's take three
examples: When Cocteau wrote his works, people said, "It's
not surprising that he flaunts his sexuality and his sexual
preferences with such ostentation since he is a homo­
sexual." Then Proust, and about Proust they said, "It's not
surprising that he hides and reveals his sexuality, that he
lets it appear clearly while also hiding it in his work, since
he is a homosexual." And it could also be said about Rous­
sel, "It's not surprising that he hides it completely since he
is a homosexual." In other words, of the three possible
modes of behavior-hiding it entirely, hiding it while
revealing it, or flaunting it-all can appear as a result of
sexuality, but I would say that it is related to a way of living.
It's a choice in relation to what one is as a sexual being
and also as a writer. It's the choice made in the relationship
1 86 DEATH AND THE LABYRINTH
between the style of sexual life and the work. On reflec­
tion it should be said that because he is homosexual, he
hid his sexuality in his work, or else it's because he hid his
sexuality in his life that he also hid it in his work. There­
fore, I believe that it is better to try to understand that
someone who is a writer is not simply doing his work in his
books, in what he publishes, but that his major work is, in
the end, himself in the process of writing his books. The
private life of an individual, his sexual preference, and his
work are interrelated not because his work translates his
sexual life, but because the work includes the whole life as
well as the text. The work is more than the work: the sub­
ject who is writing is part of the work.
C.R.: Did your study of Roussel not lead you to other
subjects that continued the pursuit of your interest?
M.F.: No, I have kept my love of Roussel as something
gratuitous and I prefer it that way. I'm not a literary critic
nor a literary historian, and to the extent that Roussel was
unknown, except by a few people, when I wrote about
him, he was not part of the great literary patrimony. Per­
haps those are the reasons I had no scruples about study­
ing him. I did not do it for Mallarme or for Proust. I wrote
about Roussel because he was neglected, hibernating on
the shelves of Jose Corti's bookshop. I enjoyed doing it,
but I am glad I never continued that work. I would have
felt, not now, but in those days, that I was betraying Rous­
sel, normalizing him, by treating him as an author like
others if after writing about him I had started another
study of another writer. Thus he remained unique.
C.R.: In this book there's a flight of style, a rhetorical
play from chapter to chapter. Was this book different both
in subject and in your approach to writing?
M.F.: Yes, it is by far the book I wrote most easily, with
the greatest pleasure, and most rapidly; because I usually
write very slowly, I have to rewrite endlessly, and finally
An Interview with Michel Foucault
there are countless corrections. I imagine it must be a
complex work to read, because I belong to that category of
people who, when they write spontaneously, write in a
slightly convoluted manner and are obliged to simplify
and clarify. In my other books I tried to use a certain type
of analysis, and to write in a particular way-in short,
much more deliberate, more focused. My relationship to
my book on Roussel, and to Roussel's work, is something
very personal, which I remember as a happy period. I
would go so far as to say that it doesn't have a place in the
sequence of my books. No one has tried to explain that I
wrote it because I had already written a study of madness
and that I would write on the history of sexuality. No one
has paid much attention to this book, and I'm glad; it's my
secret affair. You know, he was my love for several summers
. . . no one knew it.
C.R.: You've said that you don't want to analyze your
personal reactions.
M.F.: It is not a question that what I have to say can
illuminate Roussel's text, but that it will eventually reveal
the type of interest that a Frenchman of the nineteen six­
ties could bring to these texts.
C.R.: I wanted to ask you about Roland Barthes' desire
at the end of his life to create a synthesis of his ideas in a
work of art. He began speaking about his diaries. I
wondered how you understood this change in him.
M.F.: In the Fragments of a Lover's Discourse he revealed
himself well enough. He never discussed it directly with
me. What I can tell you is that the rumors that when he
died he was in a crisis, and that he wanted to die, are
completely false. It happens that I was with him at the
moment of the accident, and I was at the hospital where
they brought him and I spoke with his doctors-the
rumors are completely false.
I also happened to see him a week before his accident,
1 88 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

and watching him with his students at the university, I

thought, He is in his element, he's acquired the dis­
tinguished bearing of a man who is mature, serene, com­
pletely developed. I remember thinking, He'll live to be
ninety years old; he is one of those men whose most
important work will be written between the ages of sixty
and ninety. I do believe that in his eyes, his critical works,
his essays, were the preliminary sketches of something
which would have been very important and interesting.
 POSTSCRIPT

On Raymond Roussel
BY JOHN ASHBERY

RAY M O N D Ro U S S E L ' s N A M E does not yet mean very

much in America; it means almost as little in France,
where he is remembered as an amiable eccentric, the
author of naive plays which intrigued the surrealists. And
yet in spite of the fact that the public has always regarded
him as a curiosity, some of France's leading modern
writers and artists, from Gide and Cocteau to Duchamp
and Giacometti, from the surrealists to the school of the
nouveau roman, have considered him a genius.
Who was the writer capable of arousing such diverse
enthusiasms, and why, in spite of it all, does Roussel remain
an obscure figure known only to a few initiates? Perhaps
there is a kind of answer in Cocteau's remarks about him in
Opium: "Raymond Roussel, or genius in its pure state . . . .
In 1918 I rejected Roussel as likely to place me under a spell
from which I could see no escape. Since then I have con­
structed defenses. I can look at him from the outside." It
is true that there is hidden in Roussel something so
 DEATH A N D THE LAB YR I N T H
strong, so ominous, and so pregnant with the darkness of
the "infinite spaces" that frightened Pascal, that one feels
the need for some sort of protective equipment when one
reads him. Perhaps the nature of his work is such that it
must be looked at "from the outside" or not at all.
Though Roussel died only in 1933, at the age of fifty-six,
there exists little biographical information about him.
What little we do know is contained chiefly in his short
memoir published posthumously in Comment ]'ai Ecrit
Certains de Mes Livres, and in the articles of Michel Leiris,
the leading authority on Roussel. Luckily for us, Leiris, a
former surrealist who is one of France's most brilliant and
original writers, knew Roussel from childhood, since his
father was Roussel's business manager. If it had not been
for this fortunate coincidence, our knowledge of Roussel's
life would be slight indeed.
Roussel was born on January 20, 1877, in Paris in his
parents' apartment at 25 Boulevard Malesherbes. His
father, Eugene Roussel, was a wealthy stockbroker; his
mother, nee Marguerite Moreau-Chaslon, came from a
bourgeois family of some prominence. There were two
elder children-Georges, who died of tuberculosis in
190 1 at the age of thirty, and Germaine, who later married
into the nobility, becoming Comtesse de Breteuil, later
Duchesse d'Elchingen.
We may suppose for Roussel a Proustian childhood
dominated by his possessive and eccentric mother; the
Roussels were, in fact, near neighbors of the Prousts, who
lived at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes; they had common friends,
including the painter Madeleine Lemaire, in whose salon
Proust made his debut in society and who painted a portrait
of Roussel as a child, and later illustrated his poem Le
Concert in Le Gaulois du Dimanche, as she had illustrated
Proust's Les Plaisirs et lesfours. Proust and Roussel knew each
other-how well, we do not know. There is a reference to a
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel
Madame Roussel in Proust's correspondence with his
mother, and a passage in a letter from Proust to Roussel,
containing polite praise of Roussel's La Doublure, included
in the publicity brochure which accompanied Roussel's
books. The curious similarity between the temperament
and work of the two men (Roussel seeming a kind of dark
and distorted reflection ofProust) has been noted: Cocteau,
for instance, called Roussel "the Proust of dreams."
The Roussels' wealth increased and during the late
eighties they moved from the Boulevard Malesherbes to a
large hOtel particulier off the Champs-Elysees at 5 0 Rue de
Chaillot (now 20 Rue Quentin-Bauchart) . When Roussel
was thirteen, his mother persuaded his father to let him
leave the lycee and continue his studies at the Paris Con­
servatory, where he studied piano with Louis Diemer and
won a second and then a first honorable mention. He
began to compose songs at the age of sixteen, but gave
these up for poetry a year later because he found that "the
words came easier than the music."
In 1 897, when he was twenty, his first book, a "novel" in
verse entitled La Doublure (which can mean either "The
Understudy" or "The Lining") , was published at his own
expense by the firm of Lemerre, known especially for its
editions of the Parnassian poets. While he was writing La
Doublure, Roussel had experienced for several months "a
sensation of universal glory of an extraordinary intensity."
The complete failure of the book plunged him into a state
of violent despair from which he never fully recovered.
Later he was treated by the famous psychologist Pierre
Janet, who describes him under the name of Martial in his
book De l'Angoisse a l'Extase. Here is Janet on Roussel: "He
lives alone, cut off from the world, in a way which seems
sad but which suffices to fill him with joy, for he works
almost constantly. . . . He will not accept the least bit of
advice; he has an absolute faith in the destiny reserved for
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

him. ' I shall reach the heights; I was born for dazzling glory.
It may be long in coming, but I shall have a glory greater
than that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon . . . . This glory will
reflect on all my works without exception; it will cast itself
on all the events of my life: people will look up the facts of
my childhood and will admire the way I played prisoner's
base . . . . No author has been or can be superior to me .
As the poet said, you feel a burning sensation at your brow.
I felt once that there was a star at my brow and I shall never
forget it. ' These affirmations concerning works which do
not seem destined to conquer a large public and which
have attracted so little attention seem to indicate weakness
of judgment or exalted pride-yet Martial merits neither
criticism. His judgment on other subjects is quite sound,
and he is very modest and even timid in his other conduct."
Embittered by the failure of La Doublure and the works
which followed it, and no doubt also by the derision that
now greeted his rare appearances in Paris society, Roussel
began to lead the retired, hermetic existence which janet
mentions. He installed himself in a Second Empire man­
sion that the family owned in Neuilly at 25 Boulevard
Richard Wallace-an elegant, secluded avenue bordering
the Bois de Boulogne. Here he worked constantly behind
the closed shutters of his villa, which was set among several
acres of beautifully kept lawns and flower beds, like the
villa Locus Solus in his novel of that same name, the
property of a Jules Verne inventor-hero named Martial
Canterel, who is of course Roussel himself.
Mter the First World War, during which he held a rela­
tively safe and simple post, Roussel began to travel widely,
sometimes using the luxurious roulotte (a kind of prototype
of today's "camper") which he had ordered specially con­
structed. But he did little sightseeing as a rule, preferring to
remain in his stateroom or hotel room working. He visited
Tahiti because he admired Pierre Loti; from Persia he
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel 1 93
wrote to his friend Madame Dufrene that Baghdad
reminded him of Lecocq's operetta Ali-Baba: "The people
wear costumes more extraordinary than those of the chorus
at the Gaite." As Michel Leiris points out, "Roussel never
really traveled. It seems likely that the outside world never
broke through into the universe he carried within him, and
that, in all the countries he visited, he saw only what he had
put there in advance, elements which corresponded abso­
lutely with that universe that was peculiar to him . . . .
Placing the imaginary above all else, he seems to have
experienced a much stronger attraction for everything
that was theatrical, trompe-1' oeil, illusion, than for reality."
In the 1 920s Roussel began to write for the theater. He
had already devised a theatrical version of his 1 91 0 novel
Impressions d 'Afrique, which had run for a month in 1 9 1 2. 1t
seems that he approached the theater because the public
had failed to "understand" the work in its form as a novel.
Roussel apparently believed that there was a concrete,
hidden meaning to the work which the spectators might
grasp if they could see it acted out before them. Produced
in May 1 9 1 2 , at the Theatre Antoine, with some of the
leading actors of the day, including Dorival and Duard,
Impressions d'Afrique struck the Parisian public as an enor­
mous joke, though it did attract spectators like Apol­
linaire, Duchamp, and Picabia. But Roussel's later plays
were fated to receive much harsher treatment.
Imagining that the failure of Impressions was due to his
lack of experience in writing for the stage, Roussel commis­
sioned Pierre Frondaie, a popular pulp-fiction writer of the
Maurice Dekobra variety, to turn his novel Locus Salus into
a play. But neither the adaptation, the fashionable Caligari­
esque sets, the expensive costumes by Paul Poiret nor the
"Ballet de Ia Gloire" and the "Ballet Sous-Marin" which filled
up most of the second act could save the play from the
guffaws of the public and the spleen of the critics. Roussel
1 94 D EATH A N D T H E L A B Y R I N T H

and his strangely titled work became the butt of jokes

overnight, and everyone waited with impatient malice for
his next play.
This was L Etoile au Front, which opened on May 5, 1 924,
at the Theatre du Vaudeville. Still undaunted, Roussel had
hoped to attain success at last by writing an original play,
rather than by adapting his novels. But the uproar at the
opening went beyond anything seen previously. The text
was drowned out by the jeers of the public, who threw
coins at the actors; the latter (who included jean Yonnel,
later doyen of the Comedie Fran�aise) moved up to the
footlights and began to argue strenuously with the specta­
tors. But this time Roussel had his partisans: the surreal­
ists, including Breton, Aragon , Leiris, E luard, Desnos, and
Masson, who applauded wildly and battled those who had
come to attack the play.
Paul E luard, reviewing the play in La Revolution Sur­
realiste, wrote: "The characters are all marked with the
same sign; each is prey of the same imagination, which
carries earth and heaven on its head. All the stories in
the world are woven out of their words; all the stars in the
world are at their foreheads, mysterious mirrors of the
magic of dreams and of the strangest and most miraculous
events. Will they succeed in distracting these insects, who
make a monotonous music with their thinking and eating,
who hardly listen to them and cannot fathom the grand­
eur of their delirium? Conjurers, they transform pure and
simple words into a crowd of characters overwhelmed by
the objects of their passion. What they hold in their hands
is a golden ray, the blossoming of truth and dignity, of
felicity and love. May Raymond Roussel continue to show
us everything which has not been. We are a small group
for whom this reality alone matters." And Aragon called
Roussel a "president of the republic of dreams."
Such tributes, while gratifYing, were far from the univer-
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel 1 95
sal public adoration for which Roussel believed himself des­
tined. He never mingled much with the surrealists, though
they tried in vain to establish friendly relations with him.
Sometimes he would receive them politely, but he seems
not to have appreciated their work: once when asked his
opinion of it, he replied that he found it " un peu obscur."
His last play, La Poussiere de Soleils, was produced in 1926.
This time the reviews were as hostile as ever, but a note of
fatigue had crept into them: the joke was beginning to wear
thin. Discouraged, Roussel decided to abandon the theater.
He completed and published a long poem, Nouvelles Impres­
sions d 'Afrique, on which he had been working since 1 915,
and began a final novel which was published in its un­
finished state in the posthumous collection, Comment ]'ai
Ecrit Certains de Mes Livres ( 1935 ) . In the spring of 1 933 ,
determined to leave Paris for good, he traveled to Sicily
with his companion Madame Dufrene, the only person with
whom he ever was at all intimate (though their relationship
appears to have been entirely platonic) . For several years he
had been drugging himself in a vain attempt to recapture
la gloire, and he had spent some time at the clinic in St.­
Cloud where Cocteau was undergoing the treatment he
describes in Opium. At the Grande Albergo e delle Palme in
Palermo Roussel grew increasingly weaker; on one occasion
he cut his wrists in the bathtub, and expressed pleasant
surprise afterward at "how easy it was to die." On the
morning ofJuly 1 4, 1933, his body was found on a mattress
on the floor, close to the door that connected his room
with Madame Dufrene's; the causes and circumstances of
his death have never been satisfactorily explained.
Roussel's career can be divided with almost ludicrous
facility into four periods, each quite different from the
others. The first two books consist entirely of rhymed, photo­
graphic descriptions of people and objects; the next two
are novels in which description again dominates, but here
 D EATH A N D T H E LA B YR I N T H

the things described are fantastic scenes or inventions; the

two plays which follow are merely collections of anecdotes
which the characters recount to each other. The last work
published in his lifetime is the intricate poem Nouvelles
Impressions d 'Afrique, whose complex arrangements of par­
enthetical thoughts prefigure the stories-within-stories of
the last, incomplete novel, entitled Documents pour Servir de
Canevas.
Though the failure of La Doublure apparently ruined
Roussel's life, we can be thankful that the book did not
have the success he had hoped for. Janet says that Roussel
considered it his greatest work, and continued writing
only to call the attention of the public to this first master­
piece. Actually it is the least interesting of the texts,
though it is evident from the first line that we are in the
presence of a writer who cannot be judged by ordinary
literary standards. In La Doublure he starts out to tell a
sordid Zolaesque story of a romance between a fifth-rate
actor, Gaspard, and a demimondaine, Roberte; their
lovemaking is recounted in a way that suggests how
Fran(:ois Coppee might have written if he had been
influenced by Alain Robbe-Grillet:
Sur sa poitrine a la peau blanche des dessins
Compliques sont formes d 'un cote par des veines;
Son corset par devant a ses ag;rafes pleines
De reflets sur leur cuivre etincelant, plat. . . .
On the left side of her bosom, complicated designs
are formed on the white skin by veins; the flat,
gleaming copper of the hooks at the front of her
corset is full of reflections . . .
Roberte and Gaspard decide to leave Paris for Nice on
Roberte's money; at Nice they mingle in the carnival and
thereafter the book is given over to a description of the
parade: Roussel insists on the trumpery character of the
papier-m:khe floats, and lavishes his scorn on the sham of
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel
the whole spectacle. It is not surprising, of course, that a
young, hypersensitive poet would settle on this ready­
made symbol of the vanity of appearances. But Roussel's
real interest is in the visual aspects of the carnival-its
symbolic potential is merely a pretext for mathematically
precise description. Just as his exaltation while writing the
book and his subsequent despair are the normal reactions
of a young poet magnified to an extent where they no
longer make sense in terms of ordinary human behavior,
so the conventional literary elements in La Doublure are
distorted past all recognition.
La Vue ( 1 904) is made up of three long poems: La Vue,
Le Concert, and La Source. In the first the narrator describes
in incredible detail a tiny picture set in a penholder: the
view is that of a beach resembling that of Biarritz, where
Roussel spent his summers. The second poem is a descrip­
tion of an engraving of a band concert on the letterhead
of a sheet of hotel stationery. In the third the narrator is
seated at lunch in a restaurant:
Tout est tranquille dans la salle oil je dijeune.
Occupant une place en angle, un couple jeune
Chuchote avec finesse et gaiete; l'entretien
Plein de sous-entendus, de rires, marche bien.
All is calm in the dining room where I am having lunch.
A young couple at a corner table are whispering gaily
and wittily together. Their conversation, full of
private jokes and laughter, is going well.

The next fifty pages describe a spa pictured on the label

of a bottle of mineral water on the narrator's table. Only at
the end of the poem do we return to the dining room; the
couple "chuchote toujours des chases qu 'on 'entend pas" (are still
whispering things which can't be overheard) . Love is even
farther out of the picture than it was in La Doublure; the
poet, like a prisoner fascinated by the appearance of the
 DEATH A N D T H E LA B Y RI NT H

wall of his cell, remains transfixed by the spectacle before

his eyes, which is not even a real scene but a vulgar repro­
duction. The other poems in the volume end on a similar
note of despair for the unattainable world of human rela­
tionships; at the end of La Vue the objective tone is suddenly
dropped as the author evokes " le souvenir vivace et latent
d 'un ete/Dija mort, deja loin de moi, vite emporte' (the latent,
undying memory of a summer<Already dead, already far
from me, borne swiftly away) . One sees how much the
"new novelists," especially Alain Robbe-Grillet, whose title
Le Voyeur is an intentional allusion to La Vue, have learned
from Roussel. Their exasperatingly complete descriptions
of uninteresting objects originated with Roussel, and so
did the idea of a universe in which people are merely objects
and objects are endowed with an almost human hostility.
Reality, so very unsatisfactory, has made its last appear­
ance for some time in Roussel's work. In the novel Impres­
sions d 'Afrique ( 19 10) he turns his attention to "what has
not been." Here again the plot of the novel is a pretext for
description. A group of Europeans has been shipwrecked
off the coast of Africa. Talou, a tribal king, is holding them
for ransom. In order to distract themselves until the ran­
som money arrives, the travelers plan a "gala" for the day
of their liberation. Each contributes a number utilizing
his or her particular talents, and the first half of the book
is an account of the gala, punctuated by a series of execu­
tions which Talou has ordained for certain of his subjects
who have incurred his wrath. The second half is a logical
explanation of the preposterous and fantastic scenes
which have gone before.
Locus Solus ( 1 9 1 4) recounts a similar chain of events. A
prominent scientist and inventor, Martial Canterel, has
invited a group of colleagues to visit the park of his country
estate, Locus Solus ("Solitary Place") . As the group tours
the estate, Canterel shows them inventions of ever-increas-
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel 1 99
ing complexity and strangeness. Again, exposition is
invariably followed by explanation, the cold hysteria of the
former giving way to the innumerable ramifications of the
latter. After an aerial pile driver which is constructing a
mosaic of teeth and a huge glass diamond filled with water
in which float a dancing girl, a hairless cat, and the pre­
served head of Danton, we come to the central and longest
passage: a description of eight curious tableaux vivants tak­
ing place inside an enormous glass cage. We learn that the
-actors are actually dead people whom Canterel has revived
with "resurrectine," a fluid of his invention which if
injected into a fresh corpse causes it continually to act out
the most important incident of its life. This passage, one of
the most unforgettable in Roussel's work and one of many
which are haunted by the idea of death, was written
around the time his mother died, after a long series of
family deaths. ( Giacometti, who read Locus Solus a number
of times, told me once that Roussel's inventions, and this
one in particular, had directly inspired much of his early
work, including the sculpture The Palace at 4 A.M. )
After completing their tour of Locus Salus, the guests
follow Canterel to the villa for a 'joyous dinner," and this
very full day comes to a close.
In Locus Solus and Impressions d 'Afrique, Roussel used a
method of writing which he describes in Commentj'ai Ecrit
Certains de Mes Livres. Sometimes he would take a phrase
containing two words, each of which had a double mean­
ing, and use the least likely meanings as the basis of a story.
Thus the phrase " maison a espagnolettes" (house with win­
dow latches) served as the basis for an episode in Impressions
d 'Afrique about a house (a royal family or house) descended
from a pair of Spanish twin girls. Elsewhere he would trans­
form a common phrase, a book title, or a line of poetry
into a series of words with similar sounds. A line of Victor
Hugo, " Un vase tout rempli du vin de !'esperance" was dena-
2 00 D E AT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

tured by Roussel into "sept houx rampe lit Vesper," which he

developed into a tale of Handel using seven bunches of
holly tied with different colored ribbons to compose, on a
banister, the principal theme of his oratorio Vesper.
Just as the mechanical task of finding a rhyme some­
times inspires a poet to write a great line, Roussel's "rimes de
faits" (rhymes for events) helped him to utilize his
unconscious mind. Michel Leiris says, "Roussel here
rediscovered one of the most ancient and widely used pat­
terns of the human mind: the formation of myths starting
from words. That is (as though he had decided to illustrate
Max Muller's theory that myths were born out of a sort of
'disease of language' ) , transposition of what was at first a
simple fact of language into a dramatic action." Elsewhere
he suggests that these childish devices led Roussel back to
a common source of mythology or collective unconscious.
Both of the published plays, L 'Etoile au Front and La
Poussiere de Soleils, are collections of anecdotes. In the for­
mer the pretexts are provided by the various curios in a
collection; in the latter, by the clues in a treasure hunt
which eventually lead to the discovery of a will. The thread
of narration is passed from one character to another,
resulting in a lilting and oddly dramatic language.
There is, of course, no more attempt at plot or charac­
terization than in the novels. And yet the plays are
theatrical in a curious way. The anecdotes cast on the
characters who tell them an unearthly glimmer that is like
a new kind of characterization. And these stories, cut up
and distributed among the speakers, somehow propel us
breathlessly forward. The plays are among the strangest
and most enchanting in modern literature.
Nouvelles Impressions d 'Afrique ( 1 932) is Roussel's master­
piece: a long poem in four cantos which bear the names of
Mrican curiosities. Each canto starts off innocently to des­
cribe the scene in question, but the narrative is constantly
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel 201

interrupted by a parenthetical thought. New words sug­

gest new parentheses; sometimes as many as five pairs of
parentheses ( ( <<( ) ) ) ) ) isolate one idea buried in the sur­
rounding verbiage like the central sphere in a Chinese
puzzle. In order to finish the first sentence, one must turn
ahead to the last line of the canto, and by working backward
and forward one can at last piece the poem together. The
odd appearance which the bristling parentheses give the
text is completed by the militant banality of the fifty-nine
illustrations which Roussel commissioned of a hack painter
through the intermediary of a private detective agency.
The result is a tumultuous impression of reality which
keeps swiping at one like the sails of a windmill. The hie­
coughing parenthetical passages that accumulate at the
beginning and end of each canto tend to subside in the
middle, giving way to long catalogues or lists: for example,
lists of gratuitous gifts; idle suppositions; objects that have
the form of a cross; or others that are similar in appear­
ance but not in size, and which one must be careful not to
confuse, such as a pile of red eggs under falling snow on a
windless day and a heap of strawberries being sprinkled
with sugar. Just as the hazards of language resulted in the
strange "rhyming events," here other banal mechanisms
create juxtapositions that are equally convincing. The
logic of the strange positions of its elements is what makes
the poem so beautiful. It has what Marianne Moore calls
"mysteries of construction."
Michel Leiris says of the poem, "We find here, trans­
posed onto the level of poetry, the technique of the stories
with multiple interlocking episodes ( tiroirs) so frequent in
Roussel's work, but here the episodes appear in the sen­
tences themselves, and not in the story, as though Roussel
had decided to use these parentheses to speed the disinte­
gration of language, in a way comparable to that in which
Mallarme used blanks to produce those 'prismatic subdivi-
202 D EATH AND THE LABYRINTH

sions of the idea' which he mentions in the preface to the

Coup de Des." Roussel is the only modern French poet whose
experiments with language can be likened to those of Mal­
larme. And there is, in fact, a feeling of disintegration in
Nouvelles Impressions which has been building up ever since
the dangerous accumulations of adjectives in La Doublure,
the perilously conserved corpses of Locus Salus and the piti­
less chains of anecdotes in the plays (which resulted in a
"theater of cruelty" unlike anything Artaud ever dreamed
of, turning a proper bourgeois audience into a horde of wild
beasts) . In Nouvelles Impressions the unconscious seems to
have broken through the myths in which Roussel had
carefully encased it: it is no longer the imaginary world
but the real one, and it is exploding around us like a fire­
works factory, in one last dazzling orgy of light and sound.
Many writers, including Andre Breton and Jean Ferry
(whose Etude sur Raymond Roussel is invaluable as a key to
Nouvelles Impressions) , have felt that Roussel hid some secret
meaning or message in his work. Breton (in his preface to
Ferry's book) makes a convincing case for Roussel as an
alchemist whose books are coded messages concealing le
Grand Oeuvre--the Philosopher's Stone. According to Bre­
ton, the various clues in the treasure hunt in La Poussiere de
Soleils form a decipherable message, while Michel Leiris
sees an autobiographical "chain" in the illustrations for
Nouvelles Impressions: "Voluntary death: wall of snow and
fire, organ point, ultimate ecstasy, unique way of savoring­
in an instant-' la gloire. ' " But if it seems possible that
Roussel did bury a secret message in his writings, it seems
equally likely that no one will ever succeed in unearthing
it. What he leaves us with is a body of work that is like the
perfectly preserved temple of a cult which has disap­
peared without a trace, or a complicated set of tools whose
use cannot be discovered. But even though we may never
be able to "use" his work in the way he hoped, we can still
Postscript: On Raymond Roussel
admire its inhuman beauty, and be stirred by a language
that seems always on the point of revealing its secret, of
pointing the way back to the "republic of dreams" whose
insignia blazed on his forehead.

PO STS C R I PT

The above essay was written in 1 961 and published in Port­

folio and ARTnews Annual in 1962. Much of the informa­
tion came from my own research in France at a time when
very few people there or elsewhere took Roussel seriously
as a writer. (I even gained a brief notoriety in Paris as "that
crazy American who's interested in Raymond Roussel.")
Since then, Roussel has been rediscovered and is now con­
sidered an ancestor of much experimental writing being
done today both in Europe and America. Volumes have
been devoted to him, notably Michel Foucault's study and
a biography by Fran<;:ois Caradec, Vie de Raymond Roussel
(Paris: Pauvert, 1972) . The novels Impressions ofAfrica and
Locus Solus have been published in English translation by
the University of California Press; and a collection of post­
humous fragments (Flio) has appeared in France. In add­
ition to the foregoing essay, I published an article on
Roussel's plays in an all-Roussel number of the French
review Bizarre and a short introduction to an unpublished
chapter from his final unfinished novel Documents pour ser­
vir de canevas in the review L 'Arc in 1 963. At that time the
chapter, which I found in Paris, was the first unpublished
work of Roussel's to come to light in the thirty years since
his death.
In view of the attention Roussel has received in the last
decade or so, my introductory essay reprinted here, written
before Foucault's book appeared, seems rudimentary. At
 D EAT H A N D T H E LA B Y R I N T H

the time, however, there was nothing on Roussel in Eng­

lish, and therefore I considered my job to be that of iden­
tifying and describing him for English-speaking readers. I
am happy that others are now examining the texts more
closely, encouraged in large part no doubt by Foucault's
ground-breaking analysis.
J.A.
Selected Bibliography 2ll
nist analysis. See Margaret A. McLaren's Feminism, Foucault, and
Embodied Subjectivity (State University of New York Press, 2002) .
Four critical anthologies also merit mentioning: Gary Gutting's
Cambridge Companion to Foucault (Cambridge University Press,
19934) ; Michael Kelly's Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/
Habermas Debate (MIT Press, 1 994) ; Arnold Davidson 's Foucault
and his Interlocutors (University of Chicago Press, 1 997) ; and Kar­
lis Racevskis's Critical Essays on Michel Foucault (G. K. Hall, 1 999) .
 Index

absence 1 03, 1 39, 1 66 antithesis 1 46

of being 2 1 antimeaning 24
o f perspective 1 34 antiphrases 1 5 1
of reference 22 antisentence 2 4 , 26
acceleration 1 37 antiword 35
afterlife 1 66 antonomasia 18, 1 5 1
alchemy 1 2 anxiety 1 3 , 1 68
alexandrine 1 27, 1 30, 1 32 Apollo 85
Ali-Baba 193 apparatus 66, 70, 1 07
allegory 1 5 1 appearance 94, 1 06, 1 1 1 , 1 22,
ambiguity 6, 1 7, 20, 1 03, 1 48, 150 1 39, 155, 1 65 , 197, 0 1
Amiens 79 Apollinaire, Guillaume 193
Amiot, Anne-Marie ix Aragon, Louis 194, 195
analogy 24, 87, 1 39, 1 4 1-2, 1 44, Argonauts 82
1 56, 1 62 Artaud, Antonin xvi , 1 66, 202
anecdote 22, 9 1 , 1 96, 200, 20 1 , Aristotle 65
202 artifice 59, 1 1 6
anguish 1 67, 1 68 asceticism 1 7 1
annihilation 46, 57 Ashbery, John x , xi
anticipation 80 assimilation 1 09
antiexistence 24 association 36, 37, 39, 40, 1 6 1
2 14 INDEX
assonance 5 7 bracketing 1 58
" a u clair d e la lune" 1 2 break 1 29, 1 35
autobiography 1 8 Breton, Andre 1 1 , 1 22, 194,
202-3
Barbey d 'Aurevilly, Jules 43 brightness 9, 1 1 7, 1 34, 1 3 7
Barthes, Roland 1 75, 1 76 , 1 87 brilliance 70, 1 05 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 7, 1 27,
Bataille, Georges xvii, 1 76 1 64, 1 65
beauty 1 77, 1 82, 1 83 , 203 Brod, Max 1 1
Beckett, Samuel 1 76 Butor, Michel 1 75 , 1 76
beginning 93, 95, 1 1 2, 1 1 3, 1 27,
1 35, 1 62, 1 64 Canterel, Martial 8, 24, 46, 48, 53,
being x, xviii, xix, xxi, 1 8 , 38, 52, 54, 56, 62, 70, 7 1 , 72, 73, 80,
66, 67, 77, 78, 8 1 , 82, 83, 86, 82, 88, 1 0 1 , 1 05, 1 1 1 , 1 52,
9 1 , 93, 94, 95, 96, 1 09, 1 1 0, 1 56, 1 62, 192, 199
1 1 1 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 3, 1 1 5, 1 2 3 , 1 24, Caradec, Fran<;ois 203
1 38, 1 39, 1 340 1 4 1 , 1 42, 1 5 1 , Caran d'Ache (Emmanuel Poire)
1 54, 159, 1 67, 1 68, 1 80, 1 84 45
absence of 21 caricature 1 1 9, 1 20
category of 1 42-5 carnival 1 1 9, 1 2 1 , 1 42, 197
dispersal of 1 49 catachresis 1 8 , 1 5 1
domicile of 1 40 catastrophe 85
eclipse of 22 category 9 1 , 1 42-9, 1 8 7
lacunae of 1 5 1 celebration 9 2 , 9 3 , 1 07, 1 1 3, 1 67
literary 1 00 chance 40- 1 , 42-3, 44, 45, 46-7,
mixed 97 60, 6 1 , 4, 65, 95, 1 54, 1 73,
neutral 1 09 1 80
sexual 1 85 chaos 1 55
tortuousness of 86 chasm 1 9 , 30
Biarritz 197 China 1 65
Biffures 1 83 Chiquenaude 1 9 , 27, 29, 30, 99, 1 00
birth vii, viii, 46, 68, 79, 8 1 , 90, 9 1 , chord 1 3 1
92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 1 00, circle 1 8 , 22, 3 1 , 66, 8 1 , 98, 1 08,
1 1 5, 1 48, 1 63, 1 64 1 1 2, 1 1 3, 1 1 4, 1 34, 1 37,
labyrinthine 1 64 1 47
Blanchot, Maurice xiii, xv, xvii, of language 22
1 76 perfect 33
blindness 92 Circling the Moon 79
Book of Genesis 1 49 clarification 1 27, 1 28
Borges, Jorge Luis xiv clarity 1 36, 1 37, 1 60, 1 73
Boulevard Malesherbes 190, 1 9 1 closing 1 6 1
Boulevard Richard Wallace 1 92 cocaine 1 85
INDEX
Cocteau, Jean xi, 1 77, 1 85, 1 89, cycle 74, 88, 1 26
1 9 1 , 195 of words and objects 30
code 8, 67, 1 03
negative 32 Daedalus 82, 89
coherence 37, 1 42, 1 49 Dans le labyrinthe 1 74
coincidence 99 darkness 20, 64, 85, 1 08, 1 19 , 1 34,
collapse 1 33 1 55, 1 65, 1 67 , 190
Comedie Franc;; aise 194 dead viii, 84-6, 87, 88, 1 0 1 , 1 1 3
Commentj'ai Ecrit Certains de Mes the living viii, 57
ivres, see How I Wrote Certain death vii, viii, x, xiv, 4, 6, 7, 1 1 ,
ofMy Books 1 9 , 30, 46, 47, 48, 49, 53,
commonplace 79 56, 57, 59, 60, 65, 67, 68,
communication 1 0 , 37, 77-8 69, 68, 73, 74, 75, 76, 82,
complexity 1 8 1 , 1 82, 199 87, 88-9, 90, 96, 1 00, 1 02 ,
configuration I l l , 1 3 7 1 52, 158, 1 6 1 , 1 63, 1 64,
conscience 1 49 1 68, 1 72, 195, 199, 203,
consciousness 4 1 , 1 68, 1 8 1 204
construction 1 2 7 , 1 33, 1 35, 1 80, definition 1 50, 1 6 1 , 1 68
181 degree 1 29, 1 30, 1 3 1 , 1 35
fantastic 6 of envelopment 1 4 7
contagion 1 6 1 De l'Angoisse a l'Extase 1 57, 191
contradiction 1 09, 1 42, 1 44 depth 64, 75, 96, 97, 1 03, 1 1 0,
copy 1 4 1 1 1 1 , 1 1 5 , 1 55, 1 65
negative 32 liquid 35
Corti, Jose 1 73 , 1 74, 186 design xii, xxi, 65, 1 1 1 , 1 96
cosmology 1 49 designation 1 37
cosmos vii, xiv, xxi, xxii Desnos, Robert 194
Rousselian vii-ix, xi, xxii despair 1 9 1 , 197, 198
countermeaning 89 destiny 38, 66, 95, 1 54, 1 92
counternature xiv, 86 destruction viii, 46, 47, 49, 57, 98,
counterpoint 1 0 1 1 1 3, 1 32
countersentence 1 02 self- 46
creation viii, 47, 49, 59, 63, 1 48, sustained 57
1 79, 1 8 1 development 1 3 1 , 1 80 , 1 84
crisis viii, 20, 88, 1 00, 1 58, 1 59, Dialogues xxi
187 Diemer, Louis 191
Critique xiv, 1 75 difference xix, 25, 26, 61, 73, 96,
cruelty 85, 86, 93, 1 65 1 40, 1 43, 1 48, 1 6 1
theater of 202 morphological 25
cryptogram 16, 24 disappearance 1 1 0, 1 1 6
cryptography 1 85 Discipline and Punish xix, xxi
2 16 INDEX
discourse xiii, xvi, 3, 1 7, 4 1 , 42, 55, of retribution 86
57, 62, 98, 1 0 1 , 1 02, 1 04, 1 1 3, verbal 1 35
1 1 4, 1 1 6, 1 32, 1 33, 1 55 , 1 47, ellipsis 7, 1 35
1 48, 1 55, 1 58, 1 79 Eluard, Paul 194
discovery 8 1 , 90, 9 1 , 93, 1 69 emptiness 1 1 9, 1 33, 1 53, 1 55 , 1 59,
disguise 24, 1 62 1 67, 1 8 1
disintegration 44, 202 enchantment 73
disorder 20, 1 39 enclosure 9, 78
dissociation 1 6 1 enigma 4, 5, 16, 22, 24, 25, 67, 92,
distance 36, 37, 38, 4 1 , 69, 78, 8 1 , 95, 98, 1 04, 1 05 , 1 1 6, 1 3 1
82, 85, 87, 1 05, 1 08, 1 1 5, 1 22, envelopment 1 30, 147
1 33 , 1 37, 1 38, 142, 1 52, 1 5 7, enumeration 141, 1 4 7
1 60-1 , 1 67 enunciation 35
of repetition 38 eroticism xiv
Documents pour Servir de Canevas 9 , essence 84, 92, 1 45
196, 204 eternity 6, 80
double xv, 25, 27, 28, 30, 36, 37, ethics xxi
52, 93, 96, 1 20, 1 2 1 , 1 62, 1 65 etre 1 39
doubling xv, 30 Etude sur Raymond Roussel 202
process of 30 event 87
doubt 1 2 , 13, 23, 69 evidence 95
dream 8 1 , 97, 1 77, 194, 203 evil 93, 1 54
duality 58, 6 1 , 86, 92 exclusion xix, 1 03, 1 66
labyrinth of 93 existence 24, 68, 95, 1 05 , 1 08,
of language 16, 1 8 1 1 1 , 1 1 9, 1 20, 1 40, 1 58, 1 63,
Duchamp, Marcel 1 82, 1 89, 193 1 67, 1 68
Dufresne, Charlotte 6, 193, 195 existentialism 1 76
Dumarsais, Cesar 1 7, 1 50, 181 exoticism 1 6
Dumezil, Georges xiii experience xix, 1 22, 1 6 1 , 1 64, 1 66,
duplicate 63, 82, 85, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 6 7, 1 68, 1 69, 1 77
1 22-3, 1 65, 1 6 7 solar 159
duplication 27, 52, 6 1 , 6 9 , 88, experiment 1 8, 20- 1 , 32, 88, 202
9 1 -2, 93, 1 0 1 , 1 1 3, 1 1 8, 1 2 1 , explanation 8, 9, 1 1 , 3 1 , 33, 58,
1 23, 1 4 1 , 1 62 , 1 63 59, 67, 1 04, 1 28, 1 33, 1 59,
of the past 68 198, 1 99
duration 55, 153 expression 1 8, 1 06, 1 07, 1 50, 1 64

echo xvi, xxi, 58, 59, 101 face 20, 27, 29, 1 55
eclipse 90, 92, 1 34-5 failure 1 40, 1 58, 1 9 1 , 192, 193, 196
economy viii, 1 6 7 on tological 1 40-1
grammatical 1 54 family 158
INDEX 2 1 7

fantasy 41 Foucault, Michel vii, viii, ix, x,

fate 40, 82, 1 44 xi-xxii, 1 7 1-88, 203, 204
feeling 1 65, 1 75 foundation 1 38
Ferry,Jean 87, 1 03 , 1 4 1 , 1 44, fragment 59, 97, 1 38
202 fragmentation 47
festival 92, 1 55 Fragments of a Lover's Discourse 1 87
festivities 1 1 9, 1 53 , 155 France 1 73, 189
figure viii, xv, xvi, 1 6, 21, 22, 46, freedom 1 2 , 18, 37, 69, 83, 1 1 4,
54, 55, 57, 59, 6 1 , 62, 63, 66, 141
67, 73, 80, 8 1 , 82, 85, 95, 97, Freville, Anne-Fran(:ois:Joachim
1 07, 1 08, 1 1 2, 1 1 4, 1 20, 1 22, 1 5 1 , 1 52
1 49, 1 50, 1 55, 1 65 From the Earth to the Moon 79
canonical 1 8 Frondaie, Pierre 193
double 39 Fronton Virage 1 1
eponymous 55 function 90, 1 1 6, 1 29, 1 80
mechanical 82 future 60, 80, 1 07, 1 42
of language 1 6
o f speech 1 22 game xii, xxi, 1 0, 1 7, 18, 22, 23, 27,
Five Weeks in a Balloon 79 34, 37, 40, 46, 54, 61 , 85, 1 52,
flame 1 60 1 62 , 1 80, 1 83
Flaubert, Gustave xv of truth xii
flaw 1 20, 1 2 1 , 1 67, 1 68 rules of the 28
Florence, Maurice xii, xviii, xix gap 23, 36, 40, 44, 84
Ford, Mark x between words 39
form xiv, xviii, 1 0 , 1 7, 19, 2 1 , 36, genesis 32, 1 5 1 , 1 58
38, 39, 47, 52, 6 1 , 67, 78, 83, genesis-text 30, 33, 35, 54, 55, 100
97, 1 00, 1 36, 1 39, 1 43, 1 44, gesture xx, 89, 97, 1 06, 1 07, 1 1 4,
1 46, 1 48, 149, 1 52, 1 56, 1 59, 1 1 5, 1 1 7, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 35 , 1 39,
1 6 1 , 1 62 , 1 63, 1 67 , 1 68 158, 1 63, 1 65
disappearance of 1 1 0 Giacometti, Alberto 1 89, 199
metaphorical 1 36 Gide, Andre 1 89
metonymic 1 36 glory 95, 1 56 , 1 59, 1 60, 1 9 1 , 192,
mute 55 203
negative 34
of imitation 5 1 Hamburg 1 74
of labor 1 32 Handel, George Frideric 201
of language 1 3 3 Hector Servadac 79
pure 40 hierarchy 82, 83, 84, 1 49
unity of 39 hieratism 1 07
visible 1 3, 1 7, 59 hieroglyph 1 8
formula 29 hieroglyphics 1 46
218 INDEX
history xi, xii, xx, xxi, 8 1 , 95, 1 42, field of 10
1 43, 1 68, 76, 1 78, 187 Western 82
Holderlin, Friedrich xxi imitation x, 25, 28, 5 1 , 52, 57, 58,
hollowness 2 1 , 1 1 5, 1 43, 1 66, 1 8 1 59, 6 1 , 63, 1 4 1 , 1 62, 1 63, 1 66
homograph 151 of life 69
homonym 36, 37, 40, 1 22 immobility 1 39
horizon 4, 17, 22, 67, 69, 1 35, 137, immoderation 1 49
1 67, 1 76, 1 78 imperative xx, xxi
horror 86, 89 imperfection 1 20
How I Wrote Certain ofMy Books 3, impersonation 1 62
5-1 1 , 13, 19, 2 1 , 3 1 , 62, 67-8, implosion 1 77
74, 1 02, 1 1 6, 1 25, 1 27, 1 33, impression 1 15, 1 20, 1 33, 201
1 47, 1 57, 1 6 1 , 1 74, 1 75, 1 82, Impressions d 'Afrique 8, 9, 1 2, 1 6,
1 90, 195, 1 99 2 1 , 29, 32, 33-4, 35, 46, 54,
Hugo, Victor 45, 62, 1 92, 200 60-6, 67, 69, 79, 82, 9 1 , 92,
humainism xix 96, 97, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 02, 1 04,
hypallage 18 1 1 6, 1 1 7, 125, 1 26, 1 27, 1 47,
1 65-6, 1 75, 1 80, 1 82, 1 93,
identity 2 1 , 2 5 , 26, 44, 82, 88, 93, 1 98-9, 200, 203
96, 98, 1 03, 1 38, 1 42, 1 46, incompatibility 155, 1 66
1 48, 1 49-5 1 , 1 55, 1 62 indecision 1 1 , 23-4, 1 04
lost 148, 1 50 indifference 49, 157
of language 1 9 infinity 81, 98, 1 37
quasi- 1 43 inspiration 41, 71
sexual l 85 instrument 1 1 6-17, 1 52
treatise on 1 42, 1 49 interception 1 09-10
illness 1 58, 159-60, 1 6 1 , 1 62, 1 64, interplay 1 04, 177, 1 79
1 66 invention 18, 70, 80, 87, 1 31-2,
illumination 63, 1 09, 1 3 1 1 66, 1 68, 1 98, 201
illusion 29, 5 1 , 52, 63, 1 20, 1 93 invisibility 1 04-5, 1 08
of life 58 I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered
image 9, 27, 52, 55, 59, 63, 66, My Mother, My Sister, and My
70, 72, 77, 85, 87, 88, 89, Brother: A Case ofParricide in
1 00, 1 1 2, 1 1 6, 1 22, 1 34, 1 35, the Nineteenth Century xxi
1 50, 1 54, 1 58, 1 62, 1 63, 1 64, irony xiii, 1 49
1 68
of metamorphosis 95 Janet, Dr. Pierre 4, 1 57, 158, 1 60,
symbolic 25 1 6 1 , 1 63, 1 66, 1 78, 1 85, 1 9 1 ,
imaginary 150, 1 66, 1 93 196
imagination 37, 40, 79, 155, 1 59, joining 8 1 , 82, 86
1 8 1 , 1 83, 1 94 j ustice xxii
INDEX 2 19
Kafka, Franz xvii, 11 1 67-8, 1 69, 1 77, 1 79, 1 80,
key5, 6, 7, 8-9, 10, 45, 67, 78, 88, 1 8 1 , 1 82, 1 83, 200, 201 , 202,
102, 1 03, 1 05, 1 47 203
and enigma 5 about language 1 68
Klossowski Pierre xv and being 152
knowledge xii, xvii, 1 3 1 , 1 56, 1 64 a s continuum 46
discursive61 birth and death o f 46
Kreuzlingen 6 chance element in 62
4, 82, 89, 1 00, 9 1 ,
labyrinth ix, xiv, circle of 22
92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 1 06, cold of 1 58
1 63, 1 64 depths of 53, 96
entrance of 40 destruction of 98
of origin 1 64 development of 131
of thread 96 double 101
verbal 1 30 duality of 1 6 , 18
Lacan , Jacques xiii, xvii found 1 79
lack 103, 1 08, 1 20, 159, 1 67 identity of 19, 36
of proportion 1 08 in question 10
La Doublure 7, 19, 20-1 , 29, 3 1 , 70, machinery o f 38
98, 99, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 05, 1 1 3, ninth level of 1 50
1 1 7, 1 25, 126, 159, 1 62, 1 65, occult 1 2 , 1 23
1 9 1 , 1 92, 196-7, 198, 202 ready-made 40
Lajalousie 1 76 repetition of 25, 47-8
L Ame 103 return of 23
L li me de Victor Hugo 70-5 Roussel's experience of 1 64
landscape x, 1 6, 72, 98, 101, 1 1 6, secret of 5
1 17 solar 1 65
language viii, x, xi, xiii, xv, threshold of 22
xvi-xvii, 6, 10, 1 1 , 12, 16, 17, unity of 85
18, 23, 24, 26-7, 28, 29, 30, "Language to Infinity" xiv, xv
32, 33, 34, 35, 35, 37, 38, 40, La Poussiere de Soleils 4, 9, 12, 16,
4 1 , 43, 45, 46, 48, 54, 55-6, 48, 92, 101, 1 02, 1 09-10, 125,
57, 59, 60, 62, 64 65, 66, 155-6, 1 82, 1 95, 200, 203
68-9, 72, 75, 78, 79, 85, 87-8, La Revolution Surrealiste 194
96, 98, 99, 99, 1 0 1 , 1 02, 1 05, La Source 3 1 , 1 00, 1 05, 1 08, 1 10,
1 06-7, 1 1 0, 1 1 2, 1 1 3, 1 1 4, 1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 32, 1 38, 1 99
1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 2 1 , 1 22, 123, 127, La Vue 7, 10, 3 1 , 98, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 05,
129, 1 30, 1 3 1 , 1 32, 1 33, 1 36, 1 09, 1 1 3-17, 125, 1 26, 1 32,
1 38, 1 39, 1 40, 146-8, 1 49, 1 33, 1 34, 1 35, 1 37, 1 38, 1 39,
1 50, 1 5 1 , 152, 155, 156, 157, 1 40, 149, 1 65, 1 73, 1 74, 1 75,
1 59, 1 60, 161, 1 63, 1 64-6, 1 76, 181, 197-8
2 20
law xv, 8, 52, 55, 74, 1 44, 1 68
of harmony 1 3 1
Le Brun, Annie x
Lecocq, Pascal 193
Le Concert 3 1 , 100, 1 05, 1 06, 1 1 3,
1 1 6, 1 32, 1 38, 1 40, 158, 190,
197
Le Gaulois du Dimanche 1 00, 190
Leiris, Michel 2 1 , 79, 82, 1 68-9,
1 83, 1 84, 190, 1 93, 194, 200,
202, 203
Lemaire, Madeleine 1 90
Lemerre, Alphonse 1 73, 1 9 1
lens xv 1 0, 1 06, 1 07, 1 1 0, 1 1 2,
1 1 4, 1 1 6-17, 1 25 , 1 26, 1 27 ,
1 34, 1 40, 1 50, 1 65 , 1 72
Les Gommes 1 76
Les Mots et les choses see The Order of
Things
Les Plaisirs et lesfours 190
lesson 1 30-2
Les Tetes de Carton du Camaval de
Nice 7, 1 00, 1 05
L 'Etoile au Front 4, 1 6 , 48, 77, 92,
94, 1 0 1 , 1 25 , 1 55-6, 1 58, 1 63,
194, 200
letter 1 5 , 19, 22, 32, 34, 1 07, 1 08,
191
epistolary 1 6
graphic 1 6
Levi-Strauss Claude xvii, 1 76
Le Voyeur 1 74, 1 75 , 1 76, 198
liberation xx, 1 6, 198
lie 1 43
salutary 79
life xx, 56, 57, 58, 63, 68, 73, 78,
87, 88-9, 95, 96, 1 0 1 , 1 02,
1 1 5, 1 1 8, 1 26, 1 40, 1 4 1 , 1 44,
1 6 1 , 1 62, 1 63, 1 64, 1 66, 1 75,
1 86, 1 87, 1 92, 196, 199
artistic 1 85
INDEX
fictitious 56
illusion of 58
imitation of 69
repetition of 53
resurrection of, in death 70
return to 158
semblance of 52, 78
sexual 1 86
lifetime 6, 1 32, 1 33, 196
light vii, 9, 33, 35, 37, 42, 74, 84,
88, 9 1 , 92, 94, 1 04, 1 05 , 1 1 0,
1 1 1 , 1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 27, 1 34, 1 37,
1 55, 1 60, 1 65, 1 66, 1 68, 1 72,
1 73, 1 84, 202, 204
lightning xxii, 1 29, 1 5 1
L 1nconsolable 7 , 1 00, 1 05
literature xiv, xvi-xvii, 42, 1 00,
1 07, 1 78, 1 84, 201
mainstream of 42
of the absurd 1 68
litotes 1 8 , 1 5 1
lock 6 , 1 0 , 2 2
Locus Solus 3-4, 8 , 9, 1 6, 29, 48,
53, 54, 56, 60, 63, 67, 70, 82 ,
87, 88, 97, 1 0 1 , 1 02, 1 04, 1 09,
1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 25 , 1 26, 1 27,
1 5 1-2, 154, 1 63 , 1 69, 1 80,
192, 193-4, 199, 202, 203
loom 64, 65, 68, 69
loss 80, 92
Loti, Pierre 193
love x, 92, 94, 1 63, 1 86, 1 87, 1 94,
1 98
luminosity vii, 70, 1 1 0, 1 1 3, 1 60
Luxembourg Gardens 1 1 7 , 1 73
machine xiv, xv, xxi, 8, 1 6, 45, 46,
47, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 63,
64, 65, 66-7, 68, 69, 70, 74,
75, 77, 79, 80, 82, 88, 1 00,
1 0 1 , 1 1 3, 1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 33, 1 40,
INDEX 221
1 4 1 , 1 52, 1 54, 1 58, 159, 1 66, metamorphosis viii, xiv, 1 7, 78,
1 74, 1 8 1 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92,
repetition- 70 93, 95, 96, 97, 98
machinery 48-9, 1 1 5 -labyrinth 96
of language 38 metaphor 1 8 , 24, 1 5 1
madness xi, 158, 1 59, 1 67, 1 76, method ix, 33, 46, 1 3 1 , 1 82
1 78, 1 87 poetic 47
Madness and Civilization xii, xix, metonymy 1 8 , 1 5 1
XXI Minotaur xiv, 1 6 , 82, 89, 96
Mallarme, Stephane 1 86, 202 mirror xiv, xvii, 4, 26, 27, 28,
Man xvi, xvii, xviii, xix 88, 96, 1 1 1 , 1 64, 1 66,
Marseillaise 1 2 1 1 94
Martial 1 60, 1 9 1 , 192 model 8, 29, 57, 1 1 3, 1 22, 1 34,
marvel 89, 90, 1 26, 1 56, 1 68 1 36
Marxism 1 76, 1 7 7 Mon A me 8, 62,70
mask 2 0 , 27, 2 9 , 8 7 , 9 4 , 9 8 , 1 1 9 , monster 92, 93, 96
1 20- 1 , 1 22, 159, 1 62, 1 65 monstrosity 86
Masson, Andre 194 Moore, Marianne 202
maze 9 1 , 94 Muller, Max 200
meaning 7, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, mystery 9 1 , 1 1 5, 202
2 1 , 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 32, myth 82, 98, 200, 202
36, 37, 39, 40, 44, 47, 54, 6 1 , Mythologies 1 76
64, 88, 94, 98, 1 22, 1 26 , 1 36,
1 46, 1 50, 1 63, 1 64, 1 67, 1 68, Nanon 19, 32, 1 00
1 8 1 , 193, 200, 202 Napoleon Bonaparte 1 33, 1 34,
double 1 47-8, 1 5 1 1 43 , 1 80 , 192
everyday 1 64 narrative 9 , 1 0, 1 9 , 20- 1 , 22, 24,
shift in 55 26, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40,
measure 87, 1 32, 1 49 54, 55, 58, 63, 65, 66, 78, 79,
mechanism 40, 43, 45, 46, 48, 53, 86, 98, 1 1 6, 1 1 8, 1 50, 1 52,
55, 60, 6 1 , 64, 66, 67, 68, 73, 1 57, 1 59, 201
8 1 , 1 1 3, 1 58, 174, 20 1 autobiographical 3
compensatory 1 66 nature 84, 85, 89, 9 1 , 96, 97, 1 04,
of the process 39 1 1 0, 1 1 8 , 1 20, 1 43, 144, 1 49,
melancholia 1 60 1 5 7, 1 68, 1 77, 1 82
melancholy 1 65 counterfiet of 85
memory 2 1 , 22-3, 58, 63, 77, 83, dual 93
132, 198 Nebudchadnezzar 45
message 202-3 network 1 06, 1 2 1
metagram 26, 27, 29, 57 neurosis 1 6 1
metalepsis 18 New York 1 72
222 INDEX
night 67, 77, 84, 1 1 9, 1 55 , 1 60 , 1 4 1 , 142, 1 56, 1 59, 1 63, 20 1 ,
1 65, 1 66 202
nominalism xviii, xix-xx ninth 1 47
nonbeing 38, 4 1 , 48 Paris 6, 48, 1 90 , 195, 196, 203, 204
nouveau roman 1 75 , 1 78 , 1 89 Paris Conservatory 1 9 1
Nouvelles Impressions d'Afriquexv, 3, Parmi Les Noirs 23
4, 7 , 24, 85, 1 0 1 , 1 03, 1 04, Pascal, Blaise 1 9 1
1 08 , 1 22 , 1 25-56, 1 60 , 1 82, passage 8 4 , 8 9 , 9 6 , 1 4 1 , 1 49, 1 58
195, 196, 20 1 , 202, 203 past 22, 23, 57, 58, 78, 80, 8 1 , 1 07 ,
Nouvelle Vue 1 40 1 1 3, 1 42
duplication of the 68
obsession xxi, 1 22, 1 6 1 , 1 62, 1 67 pattern 65 , 1 26
obstacle 1 1 0 pen xx, 1 1 6-- 1 7 , 1 33, 1 60
obstinacy 1 08, 1 62 perception 1 1 4, 1 20 , 1 62
ontology xv, xvi, 84 performance 84, 92, 98
fantastical 38 perspective 1 09 , 1 1 0, 1 1 6, 1 34,
opening 1 1 , 1 1 6, 1 1 8 , 1 20 , 1 2 1 , 1 35, 1 37, 1 84
1 3 1 , 1 33, 1 40 , 1 6 1 , 1 62 deep 1 07
Opium 1 89, 195 phenomenology 1 76, 1 7 7
opportunity 1 3 1 , 1 47 Philosopher's Stone 202
opposite 159 philosophy 1 76
nocturnal 1 66 of language xi
order 73, 74, 84, 1 30 , 1 50 , Picabia, Francis 193
1 62 plan 89, 1 35, 1 4 1
chronological 3 play viii, 4, 1 1 , 27-8, 64, 88, 94-5,
natural 92 97, 98, 1 0 1 , 1 04, 1 19 , 1 2 1 ,
of beings 83 1 40 , 1 48, 155, 1 56, 1 67 , 1 68 ,
of enigma 98 1 80 , 1 84, 1 89, 1 93-4, 196,
of language 1 62 200- 1 , 202, 204
of metamorphosis 98 on words 1 68
principles of 40 rhetorical 1 86
origin 89, 92, 93, 94, 96, 1 5 6 pleonasm 1 5 1
labyrinth o f 1 64 poetry ix, 20, 4 7 , 48, 5 0 , 5 5 , 58,
solar 1 64 1 0 1 , 1 33, 1 54, 1 55 , 1 74, 19 1 ,
197-8 , 200, 202
Palermo xx, 6, 60, 158, 195 Japanese 1 8 1
parade 1 1 2, 1 20, 197 Poiret, Paul 194
paradox 33, 87 positivism 1 2 7
parenthesis vii, viii, 9, 30, 58, 78, poverty viii, 9 8 , 1 67
1 0 1 , 1 08 , 1 25, 1 26, 1 27 , 1 28 , of words 1 6-- 1 7
1 29 , 1 30 , 1 33, 1 35, 1 36 , 1 40, of language viii
INDEX
power xxi, 83-4, 86, 98, 1 1 0, 1 2 1 ,
1 4 1 , 1 48 , 1 67
ontological 29
presence 24, 60, 67, 88, 96, 1 03,
1 08 , 1 1 1 , 1 67, 1 80
present 23, 58, 80, 1 1 3, 1 42
principle vii, 2 1 -2, 4 1
first xi, xii, 35
process 1 0 , 1 6, 2 1 -22, 29, 30, 39,
40, 4 1 , 43, 46, 48 , 53, 55, 56,
58, 59, 60, 6 1 , 62, 63, 65, 66,
67-8, 75, 79, 87, 96, 98, 99,
1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 03-4, 1 05 , 1 1 4,
1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 22, 1 25 , 1 26 , 1 27,
1 33, 1 36 , 1 47, 1 48, 1 56 , 1 59 ,
1 74, 1 8 1 , 1 82, 1 83, 1 86
esoteric 1 2
of duplication 93
sovereignty of 66
promise 78, 167
proportion 1 09, 1 1 1 , 1 43
lack of l 08 , 1 20
prose 20, 48, 1 0 1 , 1 33
Proust, Marcel 1 77, 1 85, 1 86,
1 90-1
proximity 1 09, 1 23, 158
psychology 1 76 , 1 78
psychopathology 1 78
punishment 86, 93, 1 29, 1 63
quest 82
ready-made 79
reality xvii, 5 1 , 1 55, 1 65, 1 79, 1 80,
1 93, 198, 201
lack of l08
vs. thought 1 8
visible 52
rebus 1 5 , 43, 1 1 6, 1 1 7, 1 2 1 , 1 22
reflection 53, 56, 63, 1 1 1 , 1 20 ,
1 46, 1 9 1 , 1 9 6
223
Remembrance of Things Past 1 80
repetition xv, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27,
28, 29, 30, 34, 46, 47-8, 53,
56, 57, 59, 60, 68, 74, 88, 95,
1 0 1 , 1 1 8, 1 33, 1 40, 1 4 1 , 1 48,
1 49-50, 1 52, 1 63, 1 64, 1 67
distance of 38
machine for 1 00
of language 25, 1 64
of life 53
representation 25, 32
reproduction 30, 38, 52, 66, 68,
l l O , 1 1 3, 1 1 7, 1 98
flawed 26
resemblance 99, 1 39, 1 49, 1 6 1 , 1 63
resurrectine 53, 56, 57, 78, 87, 89,
95, 1 58, 1 62 , 1 99
resurrection 48, 57, 70, 87, 88, 97,
1 09
return 22, 23, 29, 30, 35, 54, 55,
57, 65, 80, 8 1 , 82, 85, 1 00 ,
1 58, 1 6 1 , 1 8 1
revelation xii, 4 , 5 , 6 , 1 1 , 59, 68,
93, 1 04, 1 05, 1 27, 1 47, 1 48 ,
1 59
rhetoric 1 7, 1 8
rhyme 47, 48, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62,
63, 7 1 , 1 0 1 , 1 02, 1 28 , 1 30 ,
1 40, 1 50, 1 82
riddle 5, 9 1
ring 1 3 1 , 1 34, 1 37
ritual 7, 1 0 , 1 2 , 24, 78, 1 6 1 , 1 62,
1 64
Robbe-Grillet, Alain 1 73, 1 74,
1 75, 1 77, 196, 198
Romeo andjuliet 81 , 88
Rousseau, Douanier 1 84
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques xxi
Roussel, Eugene 1 90
Roussel, Marguerite Moreau-
Chaslon 1 90 , 1 9 1
2 24
Roussel, Raymond vii , ix-x, xi, xii,
xiii, xiv, xv, xvi-xvii, xviii, xx,
xxi, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7-1 3, 1 6, 18, 19,
20, 2 1 , 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29,
30, 3 1 , 32, 33, 34, 39, 41-2,
43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 54, 56,
57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 68, 69, 70,
7 1 , 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 8 1 , 84,
86, 87, 88, 89, 1 00, 9 1 , 95, 96,
98, 99, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 02 , 1 03,
1 05, 1 09, 1 20, 1 22, 1 25 ,
126-7, 1 3 1 , 1 32, 1 33, 1 36,
1 39, 1 40, 1 42, 1 44, 146, 1 47,
1 48, 1 52 , 1 55 , 1 57, 1 58, 159,
1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 62 , 1 63, 1 64 , 1 65 ,
1 66, 1 67, 1 68, 1 69, 1 72, 1 73,
1 74, 1 75 , 1 76, 1 77, 1 78, 1 79,
1 80, 1 8 1 , 1 82, 1 83, 1 84, 185,
1 86, 1 87, 1 89-204
Ruas, Charles x, xi, xii, xiii,
1 7 1-88
Rue de Vaugirard 1 7 1
ruin 1 5 1 , 1 66
rule 1 8, 39, 52, 6 1 , 82, 96, 1 08,
1 4 1 , 1 50, 1 79, 1 82
of perspective 1 1 0
of the game 28
Rules of the Game 2 1
sacrifice 92, 94
St-Cloud 195
scale 1 1 0, 143
Scheherazade xv
secrecy 4, 5, 90
secret 4, 5, 7, 8, 1 1 , 1 2- 1 3 , 1 6, 44,
53, 55, 60, 63, 67, 68, 77, 8 1 ,
90, 92, 93, 94, 98, 1 03, 1 07,
1 1 3, 1 25, 1 3 1 , 1 39, 1 56, 1 6 1 ,
1 63, 1 64, 1 65 , 1 66, 1 74, 1 83,
1 85, 203
self 30
INDEX
self-effacement 1 5 7
self-referentiality 1 9
sentence xiii, 5 , 9, 1 0 , 20, 2 1 , 22,
24, 25, 26, 29, 35, 37, 43, 45,
48, 55, 64, 68, 74, 83, 87, 1 00,
1 1 6, 1 29, 1 35, 1 36, 1 4 1 , 1 50,
1 5 7, 1 62 , 1 65 , 1 67, 1 80, 1 83 ,
201
eponymous 22, 24-5, 29, 34,
35, 36, 44
posthumous 7
sequence 9 1 , 95
sexuality xix, 1 64, 1 85-6, 1 87
shadow 1 04, 1 05, 1 1 0, 1 1 7 , 1 20,
1 2 1 , 1 23 , 1 27, 1 34 , 1 35 , 1 72
Shakespeare, William 98
shuttle 65, 72
sign 1 6, 22, 32, 54, 59, 90, 92, 94,
95, 1 27, 1 62, 1 67
empirical concept of 1 7
verbal 20
visible 34
signified 1 69
signifier viii, 1 67, 1 68, 1 69
silence xiii, 36, 46, 59, 69, 73, 1 02,
1 05, 1 1 9, 1 3 1 , 1 47
similarity 1 6 1 , 1 77, 1 78
simile 24
"So Cruel a Knowledge" xiv
soul 70, 72
sovereignty 1 58
of sight 92
of the same 1 49
of words 1 6
space xiv, xv, 18, 27, 30, 36, 4 1 , 67,
77, 80, 82, 95, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 05,
1 08, l l O, l l 2, l l 7, l l 8, l l 9,
1 20, 1 25, 1 3 1 , 1 33, 1 35, 1 50,
1 52, 1 55, 159, 1 62 , 1 63, 1 65,
1 68, 1 72, 1 80, 1 90
labyrinthine 27
INDEX 225
linguistic 1 66 of words 36
neutral 1 0 verbal 44
o f infinite uncertainty 1 1 surrealism 1 78
tropological 1 8, 20, 2 1 , 1 55 surrealists 1 83-4, 189, 190, 194, 195
species 1 1 7, 1 39, 1 49 survival 70, 73
spectacle vii, xxi, 22, 25, 54, 86, Sweden 1 73, 1 76
92, 98, 1 05-6, 1 1 1 , 1 1 8 , 1 34, synecdoche 1 8
1 35 , 197, 198 system 58, 1 02, 1 26 , 1 30, 1 3 1 , 1 62,
speech 41 , 57, 58, 59, 63, 1 3 1 1 63, 176
figure of 1 8 , 122 of analogies 1 62
speed 1 37, 159 vegetal 1 30
spell 82-3, 84
star xxii, 4, 37, 38, 45, 69, 9 1 , 95, Tannhauser 1 6 1
1 00 , 1 46, 192, 194 technique 32, 3 3 , 36, 60, 1 0 1 , 1 1 5,
story 59, 62, 78, 89, 1 65, 1 75 , 194, 1 26, 1 74, 202
196, 200, 20 1 , 202 Tel Quel xiv
of The Flood 65 The Archaeology ofKnowledge xiii
stratagem 23, 40 theater 8, 28, 8 1 , 83, 88-9, 98,
structure xvii, 20, 22, 28, 37, 55, 1 05-6, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 80 , 1 84,
64, 86, 88, 98, 1 3 1 , 154-5, 193-5
1 56 , 1 78 , 1 79 of cruelty 202
dramatic 9 1 Theatre Antoine 1 93
scenic 34 Theatre du Vaudeville 1 94
star-shaped 37 The Birth of the Clinic xix, xxi
style 18, 32, 33, 4 1 , 1 6 1 , 1 73, 1 74, The History of Sexuality xii, xix, xx
1 86 The Hunt 1 1 2
reversal of 1 8 The Mysterious Island 79
substance x i , xviii, 44, 7 3 , 82, The Order of Things xv-xvii, xviii
1 60 The Palace at 4 a. m. 199
loss of 28 The Rules of the Game 1 69
success 1 44, 1 58 , 1 59, 1 62 The Temptation of Saint Anthony xv
suffering 1 58, 1 6 1 , 1 69 thought xiii, xvii, 1 1 5, 196
suicide xx, 6, 88, 1 85 critical history of xii, xx
sun vii, viii, xxi, 67, 72, 8 1 , 1 02, parenthetical 203
1 05 , 1 09, 1 1 0 , 1 1 9, 1 34, 1 38 , vs. reality 1 8
1 39, 1 59, 1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 62, 1 65, thread 22, 64, 65, 72, 93, 94, 96,
1 66, 1 67, 1 68 97, 1 1 6, 1 35, 200
moral 1 6 1 threshold vii, ix, 5, 1 0 , 30, 3 1 , 67,
surface 1 0 , 1 2 , 2 7 , 40, 4 5 , 5 3 , 64, 78, 88, 95, 96, 1 03, 1 3 1 , 1 34,
99, 1 1 0, 1 1 2, 1 1 3, 1 1 4, 1 22, 1 38 , 1 39, 1 40 , 1 4 1 , 1 42, 1 59,
1 23, 1 38, 1 46, 1 55, 1 65 1 65 , 1 73
 INDEX
of language 22 unity vii, xvii, 38, 94, 1 45, 1 67-8
time 22, 23, 33, 35, 38, 41 , 53, of form 39
55, 57, 58, 68, 73, 78, 80, of language 85
84, 86, 95, 96, 1 00, 1 0 1 ,
1 07, 1 10, 1 1 2, 1 1 3, 125, vanishing point 1 35
1 26, 1 33, 1 38, 1 40, 1 42, Venusberg 161
1 43, 158, 1 60, 1 62, 1 64, veridicition xii
1 66, 1 68, 1 78 Verne,Jules xv, 79-8 1 , 1 59, 1 92
envelopment of 65 Vesper 200
mutability in 1 43 Vie de Raymond Roussel 203
narrative 55 violence xix, 85, 86
regained 54 visibility xxi, 35, 67, 1 04-5, 1 06,
triangle of 4 1 07, 1 08, 1 10, 1 14, 1 1 6, 1 2 1 ,
torture 16, 96 1 22-3, 1 65
tradition 1 77, 1 80 imperceptible, of the process
training 84, 85, 93 66
transformation xv, 28, 82, 89, 1 63, right to 1 10
181, 1 84 vision 67, 92, 1 08, 1 10, 1 1 6, 1 2 1 ,
translation 55, 1 72, 1 83 1 68
trap 1 1 , 18, 89, 9 1 , 93, 96 triumph of 94
treasure 82, 90, 93, 97, 102, 103, visualization 24
1 06, 1 3 1 , 1 55, 156 vitalium 53, 56, 57, 78, 87
o f differences 96 Vitrac, Roger 29, 99
of identity 1 50 voice xviii, 32, 87, 93, 1 0 1 , 1 02,
triangle 4, 6, 38 1 38, 1 72
triumph 94 void viii, 1 2-13, 18, 2 1 , 25, 38, 47,
trope 17, 1 50 48, 55, 57, 59, 1 39, 1 40, 1 66,
truth xii, 2 1 , 52, 60, 82, 89, 94, 1 69
1 1 4, 1 94 underlying objects and words
delirium of 158 30
game of xii solar 1 66
partial 9 Voyage to the Center of the Earth 79
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea 79 Waitingfor Godot 1 76
wealth 90, 1 1 2, 1 5 1 , 1 55, 1 9 1
Ucello, Paolo 1 12 word viii-ix, xiii, xvi, xviii, 12, 1 3 ,
Ulysses 1 80 1 6-17, 18, 2 1 , 22, 23, 24, 25,
Un Coup de Des 202 26, 28-9, 30, 3 1 , 33, 35, 38,
understanding 68, 1 59 40, 4 1 , 44, 45, 46, 48, 53, 55,
Une Page de Folklore Breton 19, 32, 59, 62, 63, 65, 68, 74, 87, 97,
1 00 98, 1 00, 1 0 1 , 1 02, 1 13, 1 1 4,
INDEX 2 2 7

1 1 5 , 1 1 6 , 1 1 7, 1 2 1 , 1 22 , inductor 44, 60, 65, 68

1 30, 1 32, 1 33, 1 35, 1 37, insolvency of 1 67
1 39, 1 40 , 1 46, 1 47, 1 48, labyrinth of 96
1 50, 1 5 1 , 1 52, 1 54, 1 55, seminal 36
1 59, 1 60, 1 64, 1 65, 1 66, surface of 36
1 68, 1 79, 1 8 1 , 1 94, 199, void underlying objects and
200, 20 1 30
and objects, cycle of 30 word play 1 2 , 20, 64, 1 82
double meaning of 20 writing 1 9 , 64
eponymous 55, 57, 58, 63 automatic 40
gaps between 39
homonymous 37 Yonnel, Jean 1 94